Title: “Why ‘Florida Man’ is a thing: Weirdness in other states goes unnoticed”
Gil Smart, author of a news article on the reason ‘Florida man’ is a thing, wrote with USA Today on the topic of the ‘Florida man.’ His argument? The ‘Florida man’ is a thing because of Florida’s hardcore public records laws. He argues that ‘Florida man’ has become a thing because everything in Florida is released to the press much faster and much less stingily than any other state, which is why we hear so much more about crazy Floridians than we do about crazy Montanans. His evidence simply supports the claim that people in Florida aren’t more crazy, they are simply more publicized than the crimesmen in any other state.
The author, Gil Smart, uses rhetorical questions to accomplish his goal. He asks “So why is “Florida Man” a thing, but “Pennsylvania Man” isn’t?” to get the reader thinking about the reason we hear about so many people from Florida doing insane things, but not from any old ‘regular’ state like Pennsylvania. This is a rhetorical question because obviously Smart doesn’t want a million comments containing people’s opinions, and also because he answers it right away with “Three words: public records laws.”
Gil Smart’s argument surely makes the most sense, I mean, if I were to argue that people in Florida were more crazy than the average Texan because I’ve seen more news articles about crazy Floridians than crazy Texans, the natural response would be that this is simply because police reports about crazy Texans are simply not as publicized as police reports about crazy Floridians. Another point I could make is that I know more crazy Californians than crazy Floridians, however, that is also because I have not been exposed as much to one as I have been to the other. So, in conclusion, I must agree with Smart’s statement that Floridians are not actually any more crazy than the rest of us because I have no evidence against it.
California Creative Writer 