April 27, 2014
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
3511 NW 91st Avenue
Miami, FL 33172

RE: “turgid and impenetrable” – Could this be the start of something big? Some comments on Federal bureaucrats - not the ones who run ObamaCare, thank God – and how some of God’s creatures are in grave danger.

Mr. Hiaasen,

What with the tandem canonization of 2 Popes on the same day we should be open to the possibility of divine intervention. Thus, when I was reading your column on how insensitive rich White guys [and where are the exceptions?] were scheming and conniving to make life miserable for Florida’s newest arrivals, anacondas and pythons, I was struck, thunderstruck to be precise, by your sudden turn away from formulaic “mALsob” AKA modern American Liberal standard operating bullshit.

Yadda, yadda, and then POW!

“turgid and impenetrable”

Could this be your Damascene moment?

Could this be the Red Sea parting to show you the splendor of the “broad, sun lit uplands”?

“turgid and impenetrable” are your words describing the way the Army Corps of Engineers’ way of doing business in re the Florida Everglades. I’m from New Jersey. Up there we call them swamps.

[Let there be no doubt as to my position here. Unless we can turn that swamp into Venice, the place in Italy, not the pizza joint on the boardwalk in Hollywood, it should be paved over. Homeless shelters, drive through casinos, Section 8 housing, Midnight Basketball clinics, halfway houses for recovering pervs would be given first priority. Naturally, all structures will be powered by a yet undiscovered amalgam of tidal action, excess mammalian eructations, and good people holding hands and wishing for electricity. It will be managed by a bastard son [or daughter] of Sam Solyndra. Who says I’m heartless? Have you ever thought of calling Halliburton? They would have the place spitting out Pellegrino or Perrier in about a year. Longer if you wanted them to get salmon to spawn there or sun powered kayak water skiing. Honest]




Maybe you could tell me why money from hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer – Wait a minute! 2 years ago “hedge fund billionaire” was a 4 letter word when it was in the same sentence with Mitt Romney. Wazzupwidat? – is good while money from non-hedge fund billionaires Ben and Jose Koch is bad?

The United States government has now spent more time reviewing the Keystone pipeline proposal than it spent fighting the Civil War in the 19th century or World Wars 1 and 2 in the 20th century.

Honest. You could look it up.

Somewhere in the Bible the line “Put not your faith in Princes” is to be found.

Modern American Liberals, particularly those afflicted with terminal “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome”, always believe that the next Prince will be the chosen one, the one who will suspend gravity and have lambs fighting to get in the dinner line with a newly irenic Simba.

Weren’t we told 5 years ago that the “earth would cool and the oceans would recede”? Saps, particularly ink stained wretches like you believed, as you always do, that nit-wit’s clap trap. Believe me when I say that my contempt is not personal but I must tell you that the steady flow of warm liquid on your back ain’t rain. Don’t look up. You don’t want to get any in your eyes.

5 years into the Age of Suspended Disbelief we find that, sorry to say, “stones are hard and that water is wet”, still.

Your concern for the welfare of the swamps West of Sawgrass is easily mockable. The people in charge of it are the same people who run the Post Office. Perhaps we could get some experienced administrators, people like those in charge of the Fast & Furious investigation or some key people who are digging into the Benghazi and IRS coverups to lend their strong hands to the swamp problem.

The Hound of Heaven, in this case bearing the decidedly un-canine name “the evidence of your own eyes”, may have nipped at your heels long enough to make you shout out “turgid and impenetrable”. We are familiar with T & A. Let us hope that T & I will soon have equal footing.

“I came out of the cave and looked up and saw the stars” is how Dante, an absolute beneficiary of the last millennium’s Global Warning period, ended one of his Cantos.




I will pray to the 2 new Saints asking them to intervene with the Lord to keep guiding your steps on your hejira to the Promised Land of Reason.

But wait. There’s more.

You say that the failure to implement the Marshall Plan for the swamp – Would that plan fall under the category “shovel ready jobs”? Can it still make it to this year’s Summer of Recovery”? – will “kill manatees”.

I know that manatee suffrage is high on the bucket list for Broward County hard core, card carrying modern American Liberals but, as harsh as it may sound, does anyone else think maybe it’s time for these wretched creatures to go?

If the top rung of the ladder of life for the Alpha male manatee is to swim into a whirling propeller maybe it’s time for these aquatic slugs to exit stage left and stage right “pursued by a bear”.

If mush brained boobs did not give them 10 day old arugula, endive, and kale they would all be lined up at our understocked soup kitchens

I don’t understand why the alligators don’t eat them.

My plan to herd them into Florida’s widest Cuisinart to make sausage for the homeless has not yet gained traction.

Maybe you, once you get over the twin palisades of “turgid and impenetrable”, surely this age’s Scylla and Charybdis, you will be my big time media mogul.

Maybe “at this point, what difference does it make”?

Maybe not.




Kevin Smith