Author

Diane Roberts

Diane Roberts

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.

COMMENTARY
University of Florida

U.F.’s loudmouth leftists need to straighten up and fly right!

By: - October 24, 2022

Did you see those ungrateful commie brats at the University of Florida hollering and hissy fit-pitching at Emerson Hall just because our wise and benevolent governor chose U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Some State Without A Coastline, to become president of their school? The students, faculty, staff, and those nosy types who think they have a […]

COMMENTARY

Hurricane Ian: This is climate change slapping us upside the head with a 2×4

By: - October 10, 2022

Ian devastated Ft. Myers, reducing hundreds of buildings to filthy, soggy splinters, yanking houses off foundations, throwing trees around like match sticks. One woman, sheltering on the top floor of a resort said, “We saw everything get swept away.” Pine Island is in pieces. The Myakka and Peace Rivers overflowed into the streets and living […]

COMMENTARY

Martha’s Vineyard migrant stunt demonstrates Gov. DeSantis’ inner jerk

By: - September 26, 2022

What kind of weapons-grade jerk celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by using taxpayer money to lure four dozen frightened, exhausted Latino asylum seekers onto a couple of chartered planes, promising jobs, work permits, and free housing, flies them to Martha’s Vineyard, then brags about it? Why, Florida’s own Ron DeSantis, of course, burnishing his brand. And, […]

COMMENTARY

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott’s epic fail at GOP campaign job: squandered millions, crap candidates

By: - September 12, 2022

Nobody likes Florida Sen. Rick Scott. Dogs don’t like him. Children don’t like him. Even Mitch McConnell struggles to be civil to the man. True, Scott’s company defrauded Medicare, though, it must be said, Republicans usually have no objection to robbing old people. He has the charisma of a week-old ham sandwich and the appeal […]

COMMENTARY

Who will rescue our tender youth from deviant professors and their noisome notions?

By: - August 29, 2022

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been campaigning for brave warriors like anti-Drag Queen crusader Kari Lake, the next governor of the great state of Arizona, and Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who grew up so poor his family couldn’t afford to give him a REAL name but later made millions the old-fashioned way: getting Peter Thiel to be […]

COMMENTARY

FL’s U.S. senators fight phantom communists, Gestapo as the world burns

By: - August 15, 2022

It’s been a while since we checked in with Florida’s two brilliant and attractive U.S. senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. First of all, they are both very upset about that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad FBI attack on Mar-A-Lago which happened for no reason other than the president took some boxes of paper […]

COMMENTARY

Talk about ‘fake news’ — a look into FL Power & Light’s covert campaign against the free press

By: - August 1, 2022

Truth? Overrated. I mean, how the hell do you monetize it? Even worse, what if it gets in the way of the right people having the right power? That’s why a well-ordered country needs a well-ordered media. You know, like in China. Or Turkey. Or Russia. The “free press” thing is a problem. So-called journalists […]

COMMENTARY

The impending miseducation of Florida’s schoolchildren

By: - July 25, 2022

As a great president once asked, “Is our children learning?” Well, is they? It don’t look good, what with government schools forcing them to become communists, hate America, and vote wrong. But never fear: Florida’s governor’s fixed that mess with new rules stopping those union-loving, Toni Morrison-reading, evolution-accepting, comfortable shoe-wearing, foreign movie-watching, gay-coddling teachers indoctrinating […]

COMMENTARY

American democracy is in danger, and we’re running out of time to save it

By: - July 8, 2022

They taught us the Union won the Civil War. They taught us wrong. The South won the war. Yes, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and told his soldiers to “furl the flag, Boys.” But that flag hasn’t gone anywhere. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists waved it inside […]

COMMENTARY

We looked to the Supreme Court to protect our rights; now, it is taking them away

By: - June 27, 2022

The United States of America is no longer a free country. Women are no longer full citizens with equal rights. The theocracy also known as the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that our bodies don’t belong to us. Anyone who is or can become pregnant will be a ward of the state, captive of a […]

COMMENTARY

Republicans seem to have decided they don’t like the democracy thing

By: - June 20, 2022

Important things we now know, thanks to the January 6th committee: White House Chief of Staff and election fraudster Mark Meadows suggested Italian satellites may have sabotaged Trump votes. The Proud Boys have nothing to be proud of. The sad camo. The backwards ball caps. The racism. They wrote up a nine-page plan to occupy […]

COMMENTARY

GOP’s approach to gun violence: Stupidity, cruelty, fear of ‘replacement’

By: - June 8, 2022

It took Ron DeSantis 11 days to say anything publicly about the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde (and Tulsa and Ames and Chattanooga and Philadelphia). Maybe he was too busy disenfranchising Black voters or boasting about how Florida is rolling in money (a lot of it courtesy of Joe Biden) while also vetoing contraception […]