Florida attracts sleazeballs, creeps and criminals the way cookie crumbs attract roaches

It’s always been like this: Al Capone wintered in Miami Beach; Richard Nixon escaped to his Key Biscayne compound so he could hang out with his mob-affiliated pal Bebe Rebozo; Charles Ponzi made a name for himself for selling Florida swampland — impossible to build on— to unsuspecting Yankees.

More recently, another shady real-estate type, found liable for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll and accused of sexual abuse (and worse) by dozens more women, bought a Palm Beach estate and now claims Florida as his home.

So, it’s hardly surprising “influencers” Andrew and Tristan Tate, British-American brothers facing charges of human trafficking and rape in Romania, flew to Florida the minute their travel restrictions were lifted last month — possibly because Trump’s special envoy pressured the Romanian government.

The Tates have fans in TrumpWorld, including lawyer Alina Habba (on the losing side of the E. Jean Carroll case) and Donald Trump Jr., who called their detention “absolute insanity.”

Elon Musk, too: He says Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer who believes women exist only to serve men, should be U.K. prime minister.

But in a rare moment of good sense, Gov. Ron DeSantis bucked TrumpWorld and told those stars of the manosphere they’re “not welcome” in Florida.

Moreover, the state attorney general is investigating certain accusations, including claims they lured a Florida woman to Romania and tried to coerce her into sex work.

Andrew Tate responded by taunting DeSantis on X: “Your wife will never win governor unless you arrest me, @GovRonDeSantis,” calling the governor a “communist” and declaring, “When Americans who are unfairly imprisoned abroad return home you betray them. You better nail me now.”

At least none of our institutions of higher learning have invited the Tates to speak on campus.

Yet.

Socratic dialog

You might keep an eye on New College, though.

Our once-renowned honors school has not exactly covered itself in glory over the past few years, what with dumping top-tier faculty, tanking in the rankings, admitting low-scoring jocks, mismanaging funds, and grossly over-paying its under-achieving president, but inviting British “comedian” Russell Brand to appear its “Socratic Stage Series” adds insult to injury.

Brand was supposed to be “in conversation” with NCF president Richard Corcoran on April 12.

New College announced the Brand appearance in February. On April 4, the British Crown Prosecution Service charged him with one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape, and two counts of sexual assault.

In a press release, New College defended bringing in Brand, wrapping itself in the flag of free speech: “After thoughtful consideration, we have decided to move forward with Russell Brand’s scheduled appearance,” citing the institution’s responsibility “to ensure a space where ideas — especially those that invite dialogue such as the topic of cancel culture and free speech, can be explored with respect, critical thought, and intellectual integrity.”

Not quite 48 hours later, New College thought better of it, announcing this “important and possibly never more relevant” conversation would be rescheduled at a later date.

NCF blamed problems with the venue (problems which apparently didn’t exist a few days ago) and those pesky journalists: “the current media climate is a distraction from the deeper purpose of the event to explore free speech.”

Brand has a court date in London on May 2.

Magic amulet

Now, you might be wondering exactly what qualifies Brand to be a guest lecturer for a public college in Florida.

He’s best known as host of a “Big Brother” spinoff called “Big Brother’s Big Mouth,” as the star of several films, including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” often-fired radio host, and general provocateur.

He used to be a progressive (of sorts), praising Barack Obama, meeting with the Dalai Lama, and saying rude things about George W. Bush, but has lately become a conspiracy theorist who, in 2024, took to selling a $250 “magic amulet” which supposedly keeps you safe from “all sorts of evil energies.”

Right.

There’s this thing we do in higher ed called “research.” You’d think a few minutes perusal of Russell Brand’s baby talk-titled memoir, “My Booky Wook” with gleeful accounts of spitting in a woman’s face and furiously smashing a sex worker’s phone because it kept ringing while they were in flagrante (a service “for which,” says Brand, “I’d paid a lot of money”) might suggest perhaps he’s not someone likely to enrich the culture.

None of this proves Brand is a rapist, but it’s pretty clear he’s a misogynist jerk.

Brand insists that while he was once epically promiscuous, all his liaisons were “consensual,” even the ones with teenagers.

Besides, he says, he has now been washed clean by the Holy Spirit, baptized last year in the River Thames by adventure reality TV star Bear Grylls.

Criminal investigation

Well, the Lord may have forgiven him, but the justice system doesn’t work like that: In addition to charges in the U.K., Brand faces a U.S. civil suit and possible criminal investigation into allegations that he exposed himself and assaulted a woman on the set of the film “Arthur.”

The question remains: Why is New College spending taxpayer money on this guy?

Other “Socratic” speakers are (mostly) defensible: Steven Donziger, who famously sued Chevron over oil operations in Ecuador which wreaked monstrous environmental damage. (The oil company accused him of misconduct in the case; he spent three years in home detention for refusing to turn over his phone and trial records; Amnesty International fruitlessly urged former President Joe Biden to issue a pardon.)

Also scheduled for appearances at New College are Judith Butler, the distinguished gender theorist, and Stanley Fish, lawyer and literary scholar, disliked by both the right and the left.

There is also, as you’d expect, a bunch of conservatives ranging from the intellectually respectable — Mollie Hemingway, editor of “The Federalist” — to the anti-vax doctor Scott Atlas.

But casting Russell Brand as some free speech hero is flat out stupid.

Milton intervention

It’s not the first time NCF has embarrassed itself. In 2024 the college invited white supremacist “eugenicon” Steve Sailer, who says Black men are in thrall to a “primal African cult of fertility,” to “debate” Black historian Dr. Marvin Dunn.

As if you can argue “both sides” on racism. There are not two sides — unless you think the KKK makes a lot of good points.

When Hurricane Milton forced the cancellation of what promised to be a particularly unlovely spectacle, you could almost believe in the wrath of God.

Despite MAGA hissy fit-pitching and anti-DEI squawking over “censorship” and “indoctrination” on campus, conservative ideas are not suppressed or censored.

FSU recently hosted economist and Reagan acolyte Glenn Loury; the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center has showcased Republican pollsters and American Enterprise Institute luminaries.

This is as it should be.

But there’s a difference between a university fostering honest discussion of academic freedom, ideology, and prejudice, and promoting a man who could soon be convicted of sexual assault.

Scrubbing the record

Florida’s Republican junta has convinced itself higher education turns innocent students into tree-hugging transgender Marxists who read nothing but books on critical race theory.

Terrified they’ll be penalized financially and every other way, colleges and universities have busied themselves scrubbing websites of incendiary words such as “women,” “Black,” “institutional” and “trauma.”

FSU has deleted and “archived” its posts on high-achieving students before 2023, claiming, in fluent bureaucratic nonsense-speak, they did it to get rid of “outdated information to enhance user experience and ensuring our webpages load quickly and efficiently on all devices.”

In case you’re not buying that one, they’re also calling it “routine maintenance.”

A cynical person might think this is really about obscuring official praise of students who might be queer or working in currently disfavored fields of study.

A cynical person might also wonder if state government wants to use higher education to return us to an imagined past when white Christian men were in charge of everything and everything was absolutely great, especially for white Christian men.

One of the governor’s picks for the Board of Trustees at University of West Florida, an institution he calls “a left-wing college,” wanted to take us back to the 1950s.

Scott Yenor, an academic nonentity at Boise State in Idaho, thinks only “non-Jewish white men” should be in leadership positions.

He says “independent women” are “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” and proclaims, “If we want a great nation, we should be preparing young women to become mothers,” not have successful careers, certainly not in the manly fields of science, medicine, and the law.

Even some of Florida’s loudest and proudest reactionaries objected to Yenor’s weird ideas about women and obvious antisemitism.

Sen. Randy Fine, the state’s only Jewish Republican legislator (until he was elected to Congress on April 1) raised the alarm.

Back to Idaho

Indeed, Yenor is so out there that several hundred citizens, including students, alumni, former trustees, and donors, held a town hall in Pensacola — deep red Pensacola — urging the Florida Senate to reject his nomination.

Former Republican legislators, business leaders, donors, local officials, and members of the Jewish community expressed dismay. UWF President Emerita Judy Bense urged people to tell the governor “this is wrong.”

The amazing thing is, they won. Yenor, who had not yet been confirmed by the Senate, withdrew from consideration.

Sen. Don Gaetz, father of the egregious Matt, celebrated Yenor’s decision: “Gentlemen don’t go where no one wants them.”

Unacquainted with what gentlemen do, the governor is throwing a tantrum, blaming Fine, whom he describes as “repellent,” snarling, “Let’s just consider the source. I mean, that same senator called me antisemitic,” and accusing others of distorting Yenor’s record, “trying to dredge up statements” he calls “flimsy.”

Booting Yenor back to Idaho is a small victory for UWF and the basic decency we should expect from Florida’s state institutions.

“Rescheduling” Brand is, too, although New College is probably beyond redemption: Opening the campus to white supremacists and accused rapists does not demonstrate a commitment to vigorous examination of social norms and political pieties, or a bold assertion of free speech.

It’s evidence of decay.

NCF is now an educational ruin, lovely buildings perched on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, intellectually and morally empty.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.