{"id":23566,"date":"2011-10-14T13:36:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T18:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23566"},"modified":"2012-01-04T17:26:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T23:26:36","slug":"real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23566","title":{"rendered":"Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s be clear about this: I do appreciate the leftybloggers and lefty pundits in the Twin Cities that can <\/em>have a civilized debate for more than one round without diving straight into the name-calling. \u00a0They are rare, but given the number of “progressives” in the Twin Cities, there are still plenty of them.<\/p>\n

That’s not just smack-talk. \u00a0I grew up in a liberal household, I was a liberal til my early twenties, and my parents still are (although all three of us Berg kids did in fact see the light), so I have no interest in demonizing or pointlessly antagonizing liberals; I have to visit them over Christmas, for crying out loud.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I get along with Jeff Rosenberg just fine. \u00a0He’s a good guy. \u00a0Wrong about most things, but then so’s my Mom, and we get along too.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Jeff bit on that most classic bit of inter-party smack talk<\/a>, “The Real American”:<\/p>\n

According to Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign, I\u2019m not a \u201cReal American,\u201d because I live in a city.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That one seems to bug a lot of libs. \u00a0Which, to be fair, is what it was intended to do. \u00a0It’s “smack talk”; sorta like saying “your momma’s so fat, they can’t even find the search party they sent down her butt crack to find the missing airplane”; it doesn’t really mean that anyone’s missing, or that any of that could fit between “your momma’s” buttcheeks, or even that any of us have met your mother.<\/p>\n

It’s just supposed to get you too angry to think about your game. \u00a0It gets me – the smack-talker – into your head. \u00a0It puts me in control.<\/p>\n

And it worked!<\/p>\n

Now, it is <\/em>a fact that America’s urban areas tend to vote Democrat. \u00a0And it is a further fact that Democrats, while often proclaiming the depth of their patriotism, also have a really hard time with the idea of American exceptionalism; patriotism in a red county may be chock full of God Bless America and the Troops and “Shining City On A Hill”, while in a Blue county it is frequently more a matter of “We’re a lot less unlike France than we used to be, and with 12 more years of Obama and Dayton, we’ll get even better<\/em>“, and yes, I know I’m simplifying things, but work with me here.<\/p>\n

So it is a logical deduction that an urban American is less likely to believe that America is anything special.<\/p>\n

Rosenberg:<\/p>\n

Apparently, Palin isn\u2019t the only one who feels that way. Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lori Gildea feels similarly: I\u2019m also not a \u201cReal Minnesotan.\u201d At least, that\u2019s what she told an audience in Brainerd:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jeff quotes a City Pages<\/a> <\/em>piece:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so happy to be in real Minnesota,\u201d Gildea said.<\/p>\n

Okay, well, maybe Gildea was just coming down from an acid trip, and couldn\u2019t tell if she\u2019d actually been in the state of her birth. Let\u2019s give her a chance to explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cOutside of the Twin Cities,\u201d Gildea clarified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Darn those SCOM justices and their smack talk! \u00a0Now, we’re going to have 50,000 leftybloggers’ undies in a bunch!<\/p>\n

And Rosenberg must be wearing boxers, because the bunch is obviously painful:<\/p>\n

Got that, everyone? The only \u201creal\u201d Minnesotans are the ones who live outside of the Twin Cities, the place where most Minnesotans live. That made me wonder: Just what percentage of Minnesotans are real?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Warning: \u00a0A Democrat is about to attempt to work with empirical, geographical and demographic data. \u00a0This could get ugly.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I\u2019ve put together a handy chart to give you an idea of how it breaks down. The chart uses the smallest possible definition of the Twin Cities, the seven-county area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s Jeff’s chart, for starters:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And can we get all you good Lakeville and Maple Grove “Real Minnesotans” to sound off here? \u00a0That’s not the smallest possible definition of the Twin Cities<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That would be, er, the Twin Cities; 667,646 people according to the 2010 census, between Minneapolis and Saint Paul.<\/p>\n

So an accurate <\/em>chart looks a little more like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure if the exurbs were real; Gildea hasn\u2019t yet clarified how many acres of land you must own to be a real Minnesotan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All right. \u00a0Time for a cleansing breath, everyone.<\/p>\n

(Whooosh).<\/p>\n

OK. \u00a0If you’re going to get all knotted up over other peoples’ smack-talk, then the game is no fun.<\/p>\n

Still, speaking on behalf of all conservatives, I’ll work with y’all on this. \u00a0Tell your buddies in the SEIU, MAPE, AFSCME, the MFT and the Teamsters to stop calling themselves “labor”, or at least “workers”. \u00a0I’m not in a union (anymore), but I most definitely work. \u00a0Indeed, among “real workers”<\/del> in the private sector, 91% of us “workers” apparently aren’t “workers” according to “labor”.<\/p>\n

As long as you wanna be all literal and all which, I stress, I don’t. \u00a0Not really.<\/p>\n

That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s be clear about this: I do appreciate the leftybloggers and lefty pundits in the Twin Cities that can have a civilized debate for more than one round without diving straight into the name-calling. \u00a0They are rare, but given the number of “progressives” in the Twin Cities, there are still plenty of them. That’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,23,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-geekery","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23566"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25244,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23566\/revisions\/25244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}