Woke up the other day to the news that Michael Jackson was dead, Farrah Fawcett was dead, and the Appalachian Trail will take you to Argentina.

I didn't know what to say.

Well, I did, actually.

I knew to say that I am saddened when people of great promise and potential pass before their time. Michael Jackson was never a favorite of mine, even before his behavior became a cause for concern. But he could sing and he could dance and his fans loved him.

I also knew to say that despite her "poster girl" image, I will always remember Farrah Fawcett for the part she played in The Apostle, one of the best movies you have never seen and one I show my Southern Culture class every fall. If you can find it, rent it.

And I know what I want to say about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has joined the list of Republicans who voted to impeach President Clinton, then turned around and ... you know. Back when he rose in righteous indignation at what Clinton did, then-U.S. Rep. Sanford said his impeachment vote was striking a blow for "moral legitimacy." Now we discover that instead of taking a long walk along a mountain path (which he said he was doing when he didn't show up for work), the governor was taking a long flight to visit a lady who isn't his wife.

News of this reminded me of what my old buddy JL (no periods) once told me: "I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning, smells like biscuits."

Work on that for a while.

Actually, JL finds something even more significant in the Sanford fiasco. He thinks we may be witnessing a new euphemism coming on the political scene. Where in the past we may have referred to anyone doing what Sanford was doing as "having an affair," "getting something on the side," "tasting forbidden fruit," and a number of other observations that would never slip past the family newspaper censors, now we can simply say that he (or she, let's not discriminate, gender-wise) was caught "hiking the Appalachian Trail."

It's wonderful to see language evolve.

I learned about these events while down on the Florida Panhandle, looking around at it all and thinking, this could have been ours.

Yessir, back in January 1901 some west Florida "movers and shakers" met in Jacksonville to discuss what it would take to get Alabama to annex everything west of the Apalachicola River. The Young Men's Business League of Pensacola was in favor, as were a bunch of other boosters of the region.

Their arguments were simple enough.

West Florida was settled by Alabamians, so family and cultural ties were strong.

Trade flowed north and south, not east and west, so commercial ties were tight.

And, they also noted, adding west Florida to Alabama would increase Alabama's population, Alabama's congressional delegation and Alabama's clout in Washington. Even back then, folks down here wanted to be sure that when the federal government started spending money like a drunken sailor, they'd get their fair share.

Besides, the annexers pointed out, the rest of Florida was a backwater and the capital, Tallahassee, was "a small town not likely to become a large one." Get out while the getting was good.

'Course, we didn't follow up. You will note the date, 1901. That was when Alabama leaders were wasting time stealing elections and writing the crappy state Constitution we have now.

Priorities.

Or maybe not.

Maybe, while no one was looking, Alabama took over the Panhandle.

Consider. Down here, folks have been following an ongoing saga involving a former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, his good buddy who happens to be a big-time developer in the Destin area, and the president of the local community college. In a nutshell, it seems that when he was speaker-designate the representative steered a bunch of money to the college which, the day after he became speaker, hired him to work part-time for $110,000 a year.

Just a coincidence, of course.

Meanwhile, the college then took the money, which was for a "Joint Use Facility" at the Destin Airport, and set out to build something that looked suspiciously like a hangar that the developer had been trying to get built for his airport business. The diversion was discovered, the scheme sabotaged, and all three — speaker, developer and president — have been indicted.

Speaker has resigned. President has resigned. Developer is checking his options.

Remind you of anything?

Any place?

Any time?

Of course it does.

It could be Alabama.

And as I said, it might have been.

On the other hand, maybe it is.

Shhhhhhhhh. Don't tell Florida. We have taken over.

Harvey H. (Hardy) Jackson is Eminent Scholar in History at Jacksonville State University and a columnist and editorial writer for The Star. E-mail: hjackson@jsu.edu.