Miami's Finest Stalks The Arts

The New Performing Arts' Center finally opened about 6 years late and 2 trillion dollars over budget, but it's Miami and, although there's no parking, that might to be a moot issue after the first great rain storm comes and we get to see if that ceiling really does hold up.

The main event at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts’ grand opening Thursday night? Cops. Off-duty, chanting, cops protesting low wages. Miami has never been one of the progressive-thinking governments to realize ONE way to cut corruption in the force is to pay the police at least $40,000

Picketing the Herald first was a poor choice. This institution of lower learning allows their writers to be paid upwards of $175,000 by the Bush administration to write for propaganda radio stations aimed at Cuba and still claim to be unbiased in their reporting; how can the possibly be interested in poor cops?

After shaking their signs and chanting their chants (“Being broke ain’t no joke”) in front of the Miami Herald building, dozens of the city’s bravest and rowdiest realized they could put on a better show if they walked around the block to The Center. There, they boxed in the dignitaries and gray hairs, the Prada suits and Brooks Brothers' shoes, sitting outside and listening to perfunctory speeches before the gala concert. The cops wisely realized that no one wants to pay $500 for an outdoor folding seat and be surrounded and chanted at.

No other gathering of discontent directed at so many pearl-wearing society members would have gone without massive presence of armed police, but this one did. Except if you take into account the incessant buzzing of police helicopters that drowned out a strained rendition of the national anthem. They should have had fireworks to thwart that; But who knew?

"Miami police Chief John Timoney stood nearby, cracking jokes with a few of his senior officers as Mayor Manny Diaz struggled to be heard over the din (“No Manny, no problem”). 'Art transcends time and ties us together as a human race,' Diaz practically shouted. More booing ensued."

I'd love to know who wrote such poignant prose for Diaz, because I've never heard him utter a complete sentence.