Florida
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9 Books That Will Make You Reconsider Florida December 12, 2024
My personal shorthand for describing the place I grew up—New Port Richey, Florida—is to say that the culture is defined by the absence of culture, but this isn’t quite true. To be more precise, it feels like there’s no culture because no culture has ...
Carl Hiaasen is the Mark Twain of Florida Men September 18, 2024
Carl Hiaasen and I were talking about recent absurdities in Florida politics, namely Moms for Liberty and their fight against a public liberal arts college, which ended with the school’s new administration literally trashing hundreds of books about g...
The Lost Art of Waiting September 16, 2024
As a child growing up in Florida in the ’80s, I went with my family to Walt Disney World many times. The main thing I remember is the seemingly endless waits for rides. My sisters and I would peevishly whine to our parents as we shuffled along, waiti...
My Childhood Toy Poodles September 13, 2024
OriginIn 1989, my brother wanted a dog. He was twelve. I was six. We lived in suburban Central Florida. We found Binky in a newspaper listing. At Binky’s house, I pet Binky’s mom and she ignored me, walking away with straight posture. Binky’s parents...
A Conversation with Tony Tulathimutte September 09, 2024
In 2016, I was lolling around Miami on the eve of Florida’s Republican presidential primary. I had time to kill in the March sun, and with me was a new book called Private Citizens. The debut novel of Tony Tulathimutte, a graduate of the famed Iowa W...
Jillian Luft’s Modern Romance September 05, 2024
Scumbag Summer opens with photographs. The first image shows two severed cigarettes in an ashtray followed by the lit sign for a sports bar called “Body Talk.” The third image succeeds an impressive array of blurbs. It is a faded version of the book’...
The Worst Thing About This College Football Season September 04, 2024
In late September 2008, the fourth-ranked University of Florida football team hosted unranked Ole Miss in Gainesville. The Gators were a year removed from a national title, and they hoped to get back to the pinnacle. But things went quite badly that ...
At the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference August 01, 2024
The evening before the fourth annual Great Florida Bigfoot Conference in the north-central horse town of Ocala, I was in a buffet line at the VIP dinner, listening to a man describe his first encounter. “I was on an airboat near Turner River Road in ...
Building Palm Beach June 06, 2024
If Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble, Henry Morrison Flagler and Paris Singer found Palm Beach an island of jungle and left it one of stucco. Every great place has an origin story: Rome had the twins and the wolf; New York...
Parents Take Control June 04, 2024
During Covid, America’s public school teachers received full pay to stop doing their jobs, often for over a year. Officially, to be clear, Zoom school was in session. But “teaching” via Zoom was barely better than nothing. Zoom schools offered little...
Americans Love Florida, Even if You Don’t April 03, 2024
I’m a big fan of revealed preference: watch what people do, not what they say. Especially in a world where survey research is increasingly coming into question, sometimes unfairly, seeing how people vote with their feet can get us closer to ground tr...
Camp Is Having a Moment on Television April 02, 2024
The more you watch of Palm Royale—the new Apple TV+ show starring Kristen Wiig as a wannabe socialite trying to make it into the upper crust of 1969 Palm Beach, Florida—the more it may feel as if a microdose of LSD is starting to kick in.Though Wiig’...
Will the Phone-Free Movement Work? April 01, 2024
On the issue of kids, smartphones, and social media, a vibe shift is happening, and it’s happening on the left, right, and in the center. Here’s a survey of recent anti-phone discourse on the topic in politics and culture in recent weeks and months: ...
Florida by the Foot March 18, 2024
IN NOVEMBER OF 2022, I SAID GOODBYE to my friends and family in Miami and took a hot pink Silver Airways plane emblazoned with “Conch Republic” to Pensacola. I had decided to take on a ridiculous quest: hike the entire Florida Trail — beginning at it...
Dave Rubin To Host 'The Rubin Report' at RealClear Gala March 06, 2024
RealClear is excited to announce that Dave Rubin will moderate the main program at our inaugural Samizdat Prize gala on March 7 in Palm Beach, Florida.Purchase tickets, today, and be part of the live audience where Dave interviews Samizdat Prize hono...
"American Spirit or Great Awokening?" by Bruce D. Abramson March 04, 2024
America is suffering from a deep spiritual crisis. The national polarization that so many miscast as political is really a conflict between two spiritual solutions pointing in drastically different directions. One is Wokeism, a new religion that spea...
Florida Man January 03, 2024
We Floridians are viewed by other Americans the way Americans are viewed by many Europeans: as primitive, mystifying, hellacious beings living in a paradise lost. Deprived of a history, we are not taken seriously, though we are considered capable of ...
