Being nice for the holidays

It's always bugged me that there are certain people, a lot of them in fact, who are nice to me around the holidays and hardly give me the time of day the rest of the year. I've often wondered if they were just fishing for a gift or looking for a holiday way to handle their guilt. Is it something that's learned, automatic or what?

I think the idea of giving gifts is real nice but I have the greatest admiration for those who give when and because they want to and not because they're intimidated to by the season and tradition. The media almost frightens us into rushing to the mall lest the economy goes into the poopers and the country goes bankrupt. It's like our trumped up holiday generosity is holding up the entire world financial market.

There are many people who call me at Christmas time...who send me cards...who won't even return my calls any other time. So if I have to say something to them during the year I write it down and have it handy when they call in December. Their end-of-year niceness actually seems sincere. It's almost like the holiday sweetness is programmed into their genes.

I've even thought I ought to return their phoniness by asking them for some kind of favor...right around Christmas when the rules of etiquette forbid such requests from being turned down. I mean, who could say "NO" to somebody who asks to borrow $50 the day before Christmas? It seems that would be a sure way of getting them to call, perhaps repeatedly, throughout the year if the debt wasn't paid timely.

The media has done a lot to set our minds on giving gifts and seeing friends at Christmas time. But isn't it sad that we need this kind of prodding to do something we surely ought to be doing by our own nature all the time?

A good friend of mine and popular Tampa Bay area radio personality Jack Harris began (and ended) a celebration in 1976 he called "Leon" - that's Noel spelled backwards. He decided it ought to be on June 25 of each year since it was at an equal distance BEFORE and AFTER December 25. He actually played Christmas carols on his program. His several listeners dropped to ZERO quickly and by the middle of his shift he had given up the idea, taken off his winter coat and went back to playing "Bridge over Troubled Waters."

What Jack didn't know at the time was that the Christmas spirit ONLY takes place during a few weeks in December, by genetic mandate. People so inclined will resist being nice and thinking about giving any other time of year no matter what the day, Christmas Carols or any other reminder be damned.

I'm willing to go along with all of this. But I'd like for all of us to be totally honest about it. Let's accept reality but also tell the truth. Christmas is a time for giving because a whole lot of us don't feel like being forced to part with our riches any other time of year. The holiday season is a time for goodwill towards men because there are so many people we don't like it just takes too much energy to be kind and generous all year 'round. To be fair, there are a LOT of extraordinarilly giving people who are that way all the time.

It's also a time we don't have to remember we are the most obese nation in the world and a third of us will die prematurely from abdominal fat. Dieting during the holidays is like driving the wrong way on the expressway. It just isn't done. The holidays have become a boon for the multibillion dollar diet industry which begins cashing in right after the department stores close their books on the Yule season.

If I have to be nice all the time because Santa is watching and making a list of my misbehaviour I'm just going to count on Santa feeling guilty about leaving me out on December 25 even though I've been an asshole the previous eleven months.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to ask Santa to look into his reindeer situation. I mean he's got a LOT of those animals that pull his sleigh who are certified hypocrites. They had totally nothing to do with Rudolph, wouldn't even give him the time of day, until one foggy Christmas eve Santa asked him to guide the sleigh. Yeah, right. THEN all the reindeer loved him. Hell, how much more fake can you get than that?

My friend, Hugh Smith

Hugh Smith, who anchored the local evening news on Tampa's WTVT for almost 30 years, died Sunday. I'm a little pissed at him about that.

Hugh and I talked on the phone regularly for the last 15 years. Though he had been in treatment for stage four melanoma (a deadly form of cancer) for about ten months he never said a word to me about it during our monthly telephone conversations that usually lasted at least an hour.

We always talked about the TV business, speculated on how long it would be before Katie Couric would be relegated to doing voiceovers for Saturday morning cartoon programs, discussed personnel changes at Tampa area broadcast outlets and reflected on times past. I had lots of chances to ask him about things he did when I worked for him that I really didn't understand. Some of the reasons he related I believed, others I took for a lapse in his memory.

I grew to become very fond of the post-broadcast Hugh Smith. That he never once discussed his illness torks me. But then again he was a very private person and held some things private even from his good friends. That doesn't make me any less peeved.

My first meeting with Hugh took place in 1965. A high school student, I walked into the newsroom at WTVT on a Saturday in March with a Bolex 16mm movie camera I had borrowed from a friend. I had shot several stories for his 6p.m. newscast after arranging to be accepted as a stringer at the station. He accepted me graciously. All alone in the small newsroom, he seemed very happy to have company. I couldn't go far because once I got off the city bus in front of the station there I was stuck for an hour or so until another passed going the other direction. Hugh thought I had a car...haha!

He was very respectful to this pimple-faced teenager who knew almost nothing about writing a TV news script and only slightly more about shooting film. He took the time to teach me about panning, cut shots, in-camera editing and all the things he felt I needed to know to make my life as a stringer easier...and his as an anchor easier as well. Being around him felt good. He knew I only got paid fifty cents per foot of film used so he lengthened my scripts a bit to ensure me some profit. Thirty second stories equaled about 18 feet of film.

After three or four months at WTVT, I moved over to WFLA. It was closer to downtown where I had more of a choice of buses and they came more often. It was also near The Tampa Tribune, for which I served as free lance photographer. Later I went on staff full time.

Once while I was working at The Tampa Tribune, he called and asked me to come see him. He offered me a job making a lot more money than I was getting at the paper. Hell yeah Hugh, I'll come to work for you. I'd love to be a big TV news star! I went back to the paper and told my managing editor, Doyle Harville, about the offer and that I was giving my two-week notice. He wouldn't have it. Doyle asked me what I was being offered, I told him, and he matched it plus a few dollars to make up for the fact that I was giving up TV stardom.

Harville pissed me off at that point because he had always poor mouthed the paper when I started talking money. Now I was fixing to leave to become a big time TV newsman and suddenly money's gushing out the elevator. I called Hugh and told him I had to rescind my acceptance of the job and explained that I just couldn't leave the paper. He got mad....real, real mad. He thought I had simply used his offer to negotiate a better deal at the newspaper. He didn't talk to me for a number of years. Time does heal.

Years later after I had graduated college and left the newspaper business, he was once again gracious to me. I never understood why some in the newsroom squirmed when he came near, others were fearful of him and some just did their jobs and avoided contact with him. On the other side of the spectrum, there were those who stood up to him and who challenged him and his authority. They always lost.

I remember one day in 1978 we came into the newsroom and learned he had fired our beloved assignment editor (Chip Collins) and another top banana or two. He said he wanted a new newsroom backbone and the firings were backed by station management. The entire news department was shaken by the loss of friends...and by the inexplicable action Hugh had taken. It was explained to us in a meeting but to this day few of us totally understand his reasoning.

One of our conversations before his death was about that incident. He was too weak to recall much detail. I still didn't get many answers. He couldn't say much between coughs. I asked him if he was OK and he said he had a bad cold. Bull shxt, Hugh. You were fixing to croak on me.

He was my good friend. I simply can't understand why somebody who I had known very well for most of my lifetime would not at least help me prepare for what was going to happen. If you're around here somewhere, Hugh, I can forgive you for a lot of things but...... I guess you are entitled to your privacy and you have it now. Hell, your family's being tight lipped about funeral or memorial service arrangements. Maybe you just wanted to skip that part. OK, have it your way!

We'll miss you.