Wow! Do you get your jollies by going around and finding the worst in every place you go? How sad! Did you bother to look at our new Library or the nice Community building or our school or the many nice houses or the new museum building? I pity you if all you see when you go through a community is the worst – and every community has some. We do have a great community – sure we’re struggling to stay alive – What small town isn’t. But we take care of each other, oh, why am I trying to explain anything to someone like you?
This is what I call a Podunk Effect. Every other town in this country has a library, a school and a great community. It’s the rest of the stuff that makes a place unique, even if it’s a rusty truck, broken-down gazebo or an old sign. Podunk Effect makes you want to prove that your town is much much better than some visiting idiot made it out to be, even though the visitor is long gone and will probably never be back. He didn’t do his research, didn’t shake hands, didn’t sign your museum’s guestbook, and now everyone will see your awesome town as a giant pile of rusted metal and construction trash. Podunk Effect makes you boil with anger and leave angry comments on the offender’s site to set him straight.
Recently an enormous case of Podunk Effect hit Kansas City, when a snarky article about the life of a vegetarian New-Yorker in Midwest was published in the New York Times.
But make no mistake: meat-loving is one stereotype that the region wears with pride. Lard still plays a starring role in many kitchens, bacon comes standard in salads, and perhaps the most important event on Kansas City social calendars is a barbecue contest.
– blasphemed the alleged heretic (none of it untrue) inadvertently creating a tsunami of righteous outrage.
“How dare he! What does he mean by “meat-loving stereotype”? Lettuce is a vegetable!”
One chef and refuter wrote:
My first reaction to the article was confusion. My second reaction was to laugh. My third reaction was anger.
My first reaction to her post was doubt – do people really have three separate reactions in a row?
My second reaction was to wonder – what was the length of time in which these three reactions occurred? Was it really fast like “I am confused! Ha-ha! Boo!” or did every stage take some time, maybe an hour or more?
My third reaction was amazement – did I just have three reactions in a row? Awesome!
The problem with the NYT article is not the lack of research, or the author taking an easy route of propagating old stereotypes instead of portraying Kansas City as an oasis of vegetarianism in Midwest. The problem is the Pavlovian defensive reaction the article prompted on twitter, blogs, Facebook and even in the local paper, reaction which just like a hurricane in a glass of water is pretty irrelevant in the scheme of things.
Because I went to college I will use a Venn diagram to illustrate my point.
All the reactions, comments, blog posts and rebuttals are staying here, with an exception of maybe this short note on the New York Magazine’s site, where one succinct comment expressed how most New Yorkers feel about Kansas City.
Here is one headline you will never see in print: “New Yorkers are outraged about an unfair article about New York City published in the KC Star“. New Yorkers don’t need our or anyone else’s approval and acknowledgement, so why do we have to get hysterical and make everyone love us just like a podunk Williamsburg,KS? Until we drop small town mentality and just do our thing whether it’s eating meat or tofu, we will always suffer from the lack of self-respect as the city.
No one is flying in here for the local vegetarian smorgasbord, it exists mostly for the people who live here and their occasional meat-hating guest. And, to be fair, the meat-loving stereotype served this city well, financially as well as being known as the BBQ capital of the world in the rest of the world. Recently I watched a clip of a Russian show where a lady presented a host with several bottles of the Kansas City BBQ sauce (ironically with all-vegetarian ingredients). That’s not a bad thing to be famous for.
One thing this city needs to learn from New York: when you say or do something that a New Yorker doesn’t like, he will show you a finger and move on.
We just need to learn to move on. But not before showing the finger.
A full-blown winter storm in March? Check!
An incorrect, rapidly changing weather forecast? Check!
Scary drive home? Check!
Making it home alive to write about it – priceless!
If you don’t feel like getting out, I shot a little clip for you.
And the rest of my photos:
By the way I still think weather forecasters should be arrested for the incorrect predictions. UPDATE: I mentioned in comments what the weather forecast used to look like in my childhood and here is a video from November 2, 1977. This is for the whole country;they just list general areas, conditions and temperature ranges (in C°).
I was going to write a reply to the discussion about the Jews and Christmas trees, but then I thought that there is no point in doing so: everyone who wants a tree in their house probably will have one, and all others will probably find a reason why they won’t. My only contribution is that you haven’t lived until you smelled a real pine tree inside your house. Just call it a winter tree, New Year’s Tree or a wreath and bring one into your living room.
During the first half of my life, we always had a tree for the New Year holiday. My Jewish Father, who spent a part of his childhood in the ghetto, made sure to find the biggest tree to fit through the door. Having a tree doesn’t make you any less Jewish, and, for certain, it doesn’t reduce the amount of antisemitism directed at you. Not the “someone looked at me funny” antisemitism, but a real, hardcore, state-sponsored harassment.
The tree of my childhood wasn’t associated with anything religious (definitely not for me), but it still had lights, presents and a five-point red star on top.
With paramedics, polyclinics and plastic bone banks everybody gets free care in the USSR.
In the 1919 when the newly launched Soviet Union was threatened by a plague of louse-borne typhus, Vladimir Illyich Lenin bluntly warned his countrymen: “Either the lice defeat socialism or socialism defeats the lice.” The USSR survived the lice and in the half century since has built to most massive system of the national health care ever known, still based on Lenin’s logical, if unsentimental premise: Russia needs her workers, and a sick worker cannot work.
From birth do death the Soviet citizen is followed by a dossier of his health history. He may get production line preventive treatment without leaving his post at school, factory, farm or office. If he is sick but can walk, he goes to a polyclinic, one of thousands of free, all-purpose infirmaries. At least in the cities there are doctors aplenty. Of the world’s 2.5 million physicians, 500,000 – or one in five – are Russians. (The U.S. by comparison has 309,000 M.D.s, for a population 85% as large. Another half million trained medical assistants called feldshers supplement the doctors, particularly in the vast, thinly settled rural outlands.
The system has flaws. To achieve quantity, the quality of treatment often suffers. Hospital sanitation is spotty at best. Anesthetics and modern equipment are often unavailable and most advanced drugs have to be imported. Dentistry is painfully old-fashioned. Medical education considered as a whole, is not up to U.S. standards (I would argue with that. M.V). But the Soviet goal is a lifetime health care for everyone, and any enterprise that ambitious is bound to have failings.
