First came Gov. Scott's disastrous tantrum over Charlie Crist's eminently reasonable request to have a fan blowing on him while standing under stage lights for hours in Florida.
Now, it seems there is, um, blowback against Crist for making the request.
Soon, Gov. Scott's campaign will be pestered sufficiently by reporters to comment on the fan business. I imagine they will be stupid enough to do so, giving the press and public a chance to relive the magic moment.
I'm reminded of a story...
My father was a Navy man. In the Second World War, he commanded an LST in the Pacific, ferrying troops and equipment from larger ships to shore as battle raged. (An LST is a much larger version of the famous Higgins landing boat, seen in a zillion D-Day movies. It was designed to carry not only troops but trucks, tanks, etc. The initials stand, officially for "Landing Ship, Tank," though the men who sailed in them invariably called them "Large Slow Targets").
When we were kids, he told us the story of an unfortunate and less than brilliant fellow. I don't remember whether the events occurred on one of his ships or another, but that's of little matter.
Between bouts of abject chaos and terror, mariners in the Pacific spent a great deal of time sailing, as Thomas Heggen wrote in Mister Roberts, "between Tedium and Apathy." Many hours were spent in the sweaty, grunting business of loading and unloading cargo.
One sweltering afternoon, as the crew was engaged in this pursuit, a hand was directing a crane operator bringing a load into the hold. Pointing in the direction he wanted the load to go, he inadvertently put his hand into the blades of a large, powerful fan set up on deck to relieve the overheated men.
The man's hand was chopped up good and several bones broken. He was taken to sickbay where the doctor set his bones and bandaged him up. He was out of action for some weeks.
Finally, he was healed up and ready to have his last dressings and splints removed. He went to sickbay, where a new doctor was on duty (smaller ships turned over personnel rapidly, due to attrition and command trying to crew an ever-shifting number of ships). The doc looked over the man's injuries and asked how they'd happened.
"Well, doc," said the hand, "I was directing the crane operator up on deck, standing next to a fan, and I went like this..." and swung his hand... into the blades of the fan in sickbay.
And the doctor was able to give the timeless prescription imparted to those who complain that "it hurts when I go like this."
Perhaps I have too great a faith in the human capacity for stupidity, but I will bet American currency that, sometime in the next 48 hours, Gov. Scott or one of his staff will go like that.
Update: Apparently, they'd already gone like that before I finished the diary:
Update 8:17 a.m.: Scott's campaign now says he didn't refuse to take the stage and that it was a mix-up -- though it acknowledges that the fan was at issue in the moments before the debate. From Scott campaign manager Melissa Sellers:
"So, let's get one thing clear: Rick Scott never refused to take the stage and debate. In fact, our campaign was not notified Charlie had even taken the stage because the last we heard, Crist was in an 'emergency meeting' with debate organizers pleading for his precious fan.
"But Charlie Crist can bring his fan, microwave, and toaster to debates -- none of that will cover up how sad his record as Governor was compared to the success of Governor Rick Scott."
Please proceed, governor.