It’s hard out here for a crooked politician.
Former Miami Beach mayor Alex Daoud was scheduled to speak at the University of Tampa last week, but some faculty thought it might be a bad idea to allow Daoud to flaunt the fact he served 18 months in prison for being one of the most crooked politicians in South Florida history.
But it wasn’t just his pension for taking kickbacks, lying and participating and other shady activities that got him the boot from talking to students.
It was the fact that Daoud is no longer the school’s most notorious former student turned politician.
Ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich now holds that title. Blago attended the school in the 1970s before transferring to Northwestern and is facing 19 felony corruptions charges for trying to sell President Obama’s Senate seat.
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Somebody should really check the political science curriculum at UT or at least add an ethics requirement during admissions.
Daoud was scheduled to read from his tell-all book, Sins of South Beach, but backlash from the Blago saga had some faculty feeling the time wasn’t right, according to an e-mail obtained by the Miami Herald.
''We have a problem,'' Tom Garrett, an assistant professor of media arts at the university and the one who arranged the visit, wrote in an e-mail to Daoud.
Daoud’s guest appearance has been rescheduled.
Maybe he can get Blago to appear on the book tour with him and they can compare notes on who was the better crook.
What student wouldn’t want that lesson?
