It shouldn’t surprise anyone that outgoing Governor Charlie Crist is bringing his largely ineffectual governorship to a close with yet another act of pure symbolism.   In the midst of Florida’s economic woes and 12 percent unemployment, Floridians can rest easy now knowing that Crist’s staff has spent ample time investigating whether or not a drunk-off-his-behind Jim Morrison exposed himself to a concert audience at Miami’s Dinner Key Auditorium in 1969.

Deadpanning as if he were advocating for Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption rather than for an out of control rock star with a long record of public drunkenness, indecency, and obscenity, Governor Crist told reporters that, “it is very important to prosecute the guilty, but it is more important to exonerate the innocent, and I can’t help to have that over and over in my mind with Jim Morrison.  The more I think about it the more I think an injustice was being done.”  Crist further opined that, “I just don’t think there is sufficient evidence in the file or on the record, no photos or video that would indicate that the alleged act occurred.  My heart bleeds for (Morrison) and his family.”

“It is very important to prosecute the guilty, but it is more important to exonerate the innocent, and I can’t help to have that over and over in my mind with Jim Morrison.  The more I think about it the more I think an injustice was being done….My heart bleeds for (Morrison) and his family.” – Charlie Crist

You just gotta love the way our outgoing Governor prioritizes and “bleeds” for trivial matters that don’t deserve gubernatorial attention, which is probably why he believes that “it’s sort of now or never” to address this cause célèbre.  For Crist to have actually invested a significant amount of thought as to what exactly happened at a sixties-era concert gig in Miami- “over and over in my mind” as he explains- shows that Crist is still stuck watching that 70’s show while reality passes him by.  It’s not likely that Morrison’s perpetual drug induced haze is crying out from beyond and calling our attention to the travesty of justice he allegedly endured- never mind that he was cited for the same behavior on numerous occasions in several states.  Can anyone argue with a straight face that this posthumous pardon is a necessary investment of political capital?  The merits of the pardon aside, t’s a good thing that Charlie and his clouded sense of priorities didn’t wind up making it to the halls of the Senate, as unfortunately they would have been a perfect fit inside the so-called “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”.

Crist will ask his fellow Florida Cabinet members to support a pardon when they next meet as the Clemency Board.  Crist needs at least two of the three Cabinet members to vote with him on a pardon, and it appears that outgoing CFO Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson will be those two votes in support of a pardon.  No word as of yet on whether AG Bill McCollum will lend his name to this frivolous endeavor as well.

Note to our incoming leaders in Tallahassee and Washington D.C. – the public has had it with meaningless gestures such as this given our current political and economic predicament.  They’ve also had it with meaningless resolutions and non-binding “sense of the (insert your legislative body here)” acts of symbolism that accomplish nothing and only prolong the very problems that government is responsible for causing in the first place.