The McClatchy Company’s acquisition of the Miami Herald, the installation of a new publisher and an executive editor on the way leave one hoping (after a few swigs of eggnog) that things are looking up at our town’s only daily newspaper. The tragic-comic incidents at One Herald Plaza this year included the Radio and TV Marti scandal (local journalists paid by U.S. propaganda office, fired, rehired, sister-paper squabbling) and emotionally unstable cartoonist Jose Varela storming El Nuevo Herald offices with a toy machine gun, which even Dave Barry could not have made up.

On the down side for Miami Lakes, Commissioner Natacha Seijas survived her recall campaign and will be gunning for that town’s activists in 2007.

We lost Miami legend Athalie Range and infamous publicity hound Ellis Rubin. A very bad movie finally killed the Miami Vice franchise. The shine came off Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, what with the fire fee scandal, the Johnny Winton mug shots and then Diaz’s hand-picked girl not being accepted by voters after a vicious City Commission race into which his supporters poured more than $700,000.

University of Miami janitors got a better contract, thanks to the efforts of a newly activist student population. We got slots at the tracks in Broward and the Seminoles bought the Hard Rock Café chain, with one tribe member promising to buy back Manhattan "one burger at a time.”

Also at the University of Miami, head football coach Larry Coker got canned after a losing season and an embarrassing on-field brawl between his team and players from Florida International University. It also seemed like half his team was involved in shootings and/or deaths this year. 

As for pro football, what the gods gave to the Heat, they took from the Dolphins. Savior-to-be quarterback Daunte Culpepper washed out with injuries and a head not on quite straight. Defensive end Jason Taylor tried to reconcile with his wife (and sister of teammate Zach Thomas) as she asked for divorce. And coach Nick Saban’s head had to have been turned a little by that astounding $7 million offer from the University of Alabama.

And the Marlins … well, some seemed to be literally pissing away their talent on the dissipating streets of South Beach.

In Liberty City, the feds ensnared a feckless bunch of ghetto kids with big mouths in a terrorist conspiracy that had about as much chance of succeeding as Ricky Williams giving up ganja.

Much more threatening to the local citizenry was the alarming homicide rate in South Florida that shot up as its citizens started gunning for each other on the streets, outside schools, at clubs and even baby showers. What the hell happened?

Maybe part of the reason was the economy, which turned uglier this year. The slowing real estate market tanked, while property taxes and insurance rates skyrocketed. Meanwhile, developers began to turn their interest to the affordable housing market, just as the Miami Herald exposed the county’s massive program as an incredible reverse-Robin-Hood fraud that enriched a handful while greatly increasing the suffering of thousands of poor people.

And just as the year crawled to a close, with Miami determined not to give any credence to that Colorado congressman who insulted us, the U.S. government decided that the best way to gain an edge in the 47-year failed embargo against Cuba would be to start showing TV Martí (pro-American, anti-Castro programming aimed at Cuba, but seen by very few there) on television here in Miami.

Seriously. Rather than simply shutting down both TV and Radio Martí as being the personal pocketbooks of politically connected trough-feeders in Miami, and completely ineffective at their stated missions, our government wants us to pay those jokers to aim their propaganda at us.

Somewhere, Tom Tancredo is chuckling.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.