Florida: 'A Paradise Of Scandals'

This story originally aired on April 17, 2005.

In a little less than a century, the state of Florida has been transformed from a largely uninhabited swamp to the fourth-largest state in the union. And no one has written about that transformation more successfully than Carl Hiaasen.

Part humorist, part muckraker, his satirical novels about greed, crime and corruption in the Sunshine State have become fixtures on the best-seller list and embraced by influential literary critics who compare him to Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken.

He is also an award-winning children's author and a former investigative reporter-turned-columnist for the Miami Herald.

And he has made a career of documenting, analyzing and interpreting what may be the most bizarre state in the union -- and one, Hiaasen says, is "a victim of its own geography."

Correspondent Steve Kroft reports.

This is how Hiaasen describes Florida: "The Sunshine State is a paradise of scandals teeming with drifters, deadbeats, and misfits drawn here by some dark primordial calling like demented trout. And you'd be surprised how many of them decide to run for public office."

Still true?

"Yeah, very true. More true than ever I think. The opportunities for corruption are many here," says Hiaasen. "But the one thing about Florida politicians, the crooked ones that I still find somewhat heartwarming, is that they're not very sophisticated."

In fact, most of them still take cash. You could hold a film festival of all the undercover sting operations and perp walks involving public officials. One of Hiaasen's favorite subjects was Miami Commissioner Humberto Hernandez, who was indicted for bank fraud and money laundering, re-elected anyway, and continued to serve until convicted of vote fraud.

"A pernicious little ferret from the first day he walked onto the stage," says Hiaasen. "And the only thing that slowed his political career down was jail, when they took him away to jail and then he could no longer serve. And even in Florida, they don't let you serve from inside the cell."

Hiaasen says any politician without handcuff marks on his wrists is considered an elder statesman. He called one Miami mayor "a slagheap of mediocrity." And he called the Florida state legislature "a festival of whores."

Hiaasen doesn't believe in writing columns that don't offend someone, and his weapon of choice is humor, not outrage.

"From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at -- you know, and the soapbox routine," says Hiaasen. "They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule. It really ruins their day. They lose their breakfast over it."

After nearly 30 years at the Miami Herald, Hiaasen is the franchise player, an old-time columnist in the tradition of Mike Royko in Chicago, or Jimmy Breslin in New York -- as much a part of the South Florida landscape as palm trees and pelicans.

And that tenure has supplied him with the material for his best-selling novels like "Skin Tight," "Basket Case," and "Skinny Dip" -- wild parodies populated by phone sex scriptwriters, sleazy plastic surgeons, crooked politicians, and the lobbyists who own them.

How would he describe his writing?

"With the novel, which you're creating this whole different set of characters, and then you really have to get into the dark, deep recesses of the brain. I mean, I think that's where my own family trembles at times," he says.

And what are the deep, dark recesses of the brain? "I think when, especially when, you're writing humor and you're writing satire, and I've said that before, a lot of that comes from anger," says Hiaasen.

Do you need to be angry to be funny? "Some days, yeah," he says. "Yeah."

Much of that anger is reserved for the forces of development, which have transformed Florida from a quaint tropical postcard where Hiaasen grew up, to urban sprawl, strip malls and skyscrapers. Hiaasen sees it as a daily collision between nature and the unnatural, the appealing and the appalling, as manatees fight for space with manatee mailboxes, and developers pave over 450 acres of green space a day.

"The one word that no politician will ever speak, is 'enough.' Enough," says Hiaasen. "This is an economy that's based on growth -- growth for the sake of growth. We don't manufacture anything. We don't produce anything except, you know, oranges and handguns. This is all about growth, tourism and growth."

Why did he decide to start writing novels?

"Therapy," says Hiaasen laughing. "Actually, with the novels, you have this wonderful opportunity to write your own endings -- to have the bad guys get not only exactly what they deserve, but in some poetic, you know, miserable way."

And nature always gets its revenge. One villain was impaled by a stuffed marlin. A few have been fed to alligators. And another was romanced to death by a friendly porpoise named Dickie the Dolphin.

"Which was based on a real episode. In the real-life thing, the guy didn't die. But he was definitely -- a lot more intimate with the dolphin than he would have liked to be," says Hiaasen. "So, I said, 'This is, I got a bad guy in the book. This is a perfect way to get rid of the bad guy.' And I did. And I felt great at the end of it. I felt like lighting a cigarette when it was over."

Hiaasen, who says he can't write without his noise suppressors and fishing cap, takes the raw material of South Florida, and then molds and shapes it into comic mystery novels, often with only minor embellishments.

In last year's bestseller, "Skinny Dip," the heroine was flung off the stern of cruise ship, only to be saved by a floating bale of marijuana.

"Are these stories true, or inventions of your imagination?" asks Kroft. "Professional wheelchair thief."

"True," says Hiaasen.

"School board candidate whose legal residence turned out to be a tool shed," asks Kroft.

"True," says Hiaasen.

"The U.S. attorney who bit a stripper during a table dance," asks Kroft.

"It's real," says Hiaasen. "True."

"A South Florida mayor who tried to hire City Hall workers to kill her husband," asks Kroft.

"Yup. Yup," says Hiaasen. "I believe she's gotten a new trial since then. But there was testimony that she solicited for a hit man in City Hall."

"All those are true," asks Kroft.

"I wish I'd made them up," says Hiaasen, laughing. "I wish I made them up."

And if you think he is exaggerating, there are plenty more examples in a folder he keeps in his office that's filled with South Florida news clippings.

"The court had ruled it 'Gators In Bed is Bad Idea,'" says Hiaasen, referring to one clipping. "This was a story about a guy who was sleeping with two full-grown alligators. And a court ruled that he had no constitutional right to sleep with an endangered reptile. And that happened in Florida."

"Was he sleeping with them?" asks Kroft. "Yes," says Hiaasen.

"In what way?" asks Kroft. "In the way that you're suggesting with your eyebrows," says Hiaasen.

"That's a good one," notes Kroft.

"Here's a guy who was stealing medical equipment, He surrenders. It's -- he was unhooking patients from their heart monitors and stealing the heart monitors. This was in West Palm Beach," says Hiaasen, referring to another clipping. "That's quite a crime when you think about it. The guys on a heart monitor. 'Excuse me while I take the machine.'"

If you ask Hiaasen why all of this stuff seems to happen in Florida, he gives a standard reply: "The most common answer that people give is if you took the continental United States and you tilted it a little bit, all the sludge would drip all the way down the peninsula, all the way down this highway … right past my house."

Hiaasen's house is in the Florida Keys, the American archipelago connected to the Florida mainland by a thin strip of Highway 1. He is almost as close to Havana as he is to Miami.

But even here, it is impossible to escape the crush of 40 million tourists who traipse through the state every year.

"It's a classic kind of Keys tourist stop. You stop and you buy a bucketful of dead fish and you walk to the end of the dock and feed these giant tarpon. Some of them are huge," says Hiaasen, pointing out one favorite tourist activity.

"And it's fun to do that. But inevitably, somebody gets their hand, you know, the fish, they keep their hand too long, you'll hear a scream and they'll have a big tarpon hanging off their hand. Which is entertaining for everybody but the tourist who -- the poor person."

The tourists eventually go home. But for Hiaasen, the larger problem is the thousand people who move here every day. Most of them, he says, are either running to something or from something. Many of them are retirees looking for a slice of paradise, and some are predators who consider them prey.

"Half the guys who get booted off of Wall Street by the SCC are now working in Boca Raton, Florida," says Hiaasen.

Another reason Florida has become so desirable for undesirables is it has the most generous bankruptcy laws in the country -- so people facing the prospect of jail or civil judgments buy houses here knowing they can't be seized. A number of former executives from Tyco and WorldCom have already moved here, along with a few down and out celebrities.

"You know, after the second O.J. Simpson trial, I see his lawyer being interviewed on the steps of court house," says Hiaasen. "You know, 'Mr. Simpson may have to leave California. He doesn't have this kind of money, and he may have to leave California.' And I turned to my wife and I said, 'He's coming to Florida.' And here he is, you know."

Unfortunately, the craziness of Florida provides a certain anonymity to all sorts of wackos, even terrorists. And if the place wasn't so dysfunctional, Hiaasen says maybe something could have been done about that.

"I was watching in the living room, and they started showing the pictures of Mohammed Atta and then the others in those photographs," says Hiaasen. "I said, 'I swear to God, those are Florida driver's licenses photographs.' At least nine of them, I believe, and possibly more had lived and worked and trained for their suicide mission here in Florida."

"And I always tell people, 'You think that was an accident? Where's the one place in the United States where the bar of bad behavior is so high that nobody's gonna notice these guys?'" adds Hiaasen. "Nobody's gonna think twice when they walk into a flight school and say, 'I'd like to get on a 757 simulator, but I don't need the part about where you land it. Just teach me how to fly it around.' And pay it in cash, and they say, 'Oh, right this way, Mr. Atta. Sit over here.'

"You know, the one guy, he goes to Minneapolis, he goes to Minnesota to learn and he's in jail in about 25 minutes. First I was surprised, and then it all made sense. It all makes sense when you think about it. Why not? Of course."

You might think that his take on the Sunshine State would upset the natives, but he has never been more in demand. A recent appearance in Jacksonville attracted nearly 5,000 people.

His first children's book, "Hoot," became a No. 1 bestseller and was produced for the screen by his friend, Jimmy Buffett. And director Mike Nichols has optioned his latest novel.

"How do you maintain the anger level?" asks Kroft. "I mean, things are going pretty well for you. I mean, this is nice."

"It is. It's very nice. And this has kept me on a plane," says Hiaasen. "My escape is to just get in a boat and disappear on the water."

Most days when he's finished writing, he's out in Florida Bay, usually alone, poling his skiff and looking for bonefish on the edge of the Everglades.

"It's like church for me anyway. It's gorgeous," says Hiaasen.

"So we're away from the weirdness now?" asks Kroft.

"Yeah. We are totally away from the weirdness, except for me," says Hiaasen. "All these little fish and all the sting rays and little sharks and everything. You're right in the middle of it, which makes it so much fun. Even if you're not catching any fish, it's a blast to be out here. It's certainly therapeutic."

His agent says that Hiaasen is a fisherman who happens to write. "I would take that as a compliment any day," says Hiaasen. "I need to do it to stay sane, so I think that, you know, the official version is it's No. 3 on my list behind the writing and behind my family."

Hiaasen could spend a lot more time out here if he unhooked himself from the weekly newspaper deadline. But he says the column is still the most important thing he does. It's his connection to the real world.

And the adrenaline rush of writing a great column that ruins some low-life's lunch is better than a Florida sunset.

"Nothing's better than that feeling," says Hiassen. "Nothing is better than that feeling. Nothing is better."