West Virginia Shames The Nation Yet Again

I’ve used the above picture probably 10 times on this website. For me, it’s as illustrative as any when I’m going to write about West Virginia, and fortunately for my recent lack of blogging, my home state managed to get itself in the news again. We dodged the national media’s typical trope: West Virginians Racist Rednecks, Nation Shamed By Their Existence. Instead, we got the second most popular headline that involves us: West Virginians Most Unhealthy People On Earth, Nation Shamed By Their Existence. Oh, excuse me, the headline wasn’t quite that awful… W. Virginia Town Shrugs At Poorest Health Ranking. …yep, Huntington, West Virginia, as a town, didn’t care about a poor health rating. I can only imagine that the author was desperately hoping for some representative to cover his face and shriek, “Don’t look at us! We’re horrible!” Perhaps a closer reading of the story might reveal more? Hell, it’s been a while…how about a paragraph by paragraph breakdown of this particular gem?

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America’s fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

I…umm…really? That’s how we’re going to start? Right out of the gate huh?

“It doesn’t come up,” said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. “We’ve got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That’s usually the focus.”

That sounds like a reasonable enough response. Although I’m surprised that the journalist couldn’t get in a few more digs at Felinton’s horrifying appearance.

Huntington’s economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city’s financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Yeah, hey, Mr. Dick Reporter, do you think that there are a lot of town’s in fantastic financial shape that have the sort of health problems that Huntington does? Maybe the town’s economic woes are a contributing factor to the city’s health crisis, and as such, judging the holy living bejesus out of the townsfolk is a simplistic, and not completely necessary, tactic. But who am I to judge?

Nearly half the adults in Huntington’s five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

God, people in Huntington are just awful human beings.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It’s even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

Oh good, the toothless reference. We were running short on those recently, what with us being so goddamned racist and overweight all of the time. Again, Mr. Dick Reporter, how good is dental care in impoverished regions generally speaking? Is Huntington an outlier against those? But again, I digress.
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West Virginia’s Racism

I’m from the state and proud of it, and although there are plenty happy to denounce the place as a cultural backwater, things here are simply different. Still, I can’t help being ashamed of some of the West Virginians that the national media is (always) able to dredge up whenever our political opinions become briefly interesting. We became interesting a couple of days ago after various websites reported Obama leading the state. Cue the, “Impossible! They’re a bunch of inbred racist hicks!” (Note to everyone: you\’re being no more tolerant than the racist hicks you’re purporting to disdain when you phrase your statements like this.) I even wrote about my own disbelief.

So let’s get this out of the way first: are there racists in West Virginia? Absolutely. Although I seriously doubt our own numbers of intolerant people are any higher per capita than they are anywhere else, from California to Massachusetts. West Virginians generally distrust the outsider, and between the two of them, Obama is more of the outsider; doesn’t matter if he really is an outsider in any sort of significant way. Perception is what matters.

Obama could fight back against this - he could visit the state. But strategically, he has more important places to fight for, and he probably figures West Virginia is a lost cause. (Although within the state, his operatives seem to be expanding their operations. Obama will do better against McCain than previously expected.)

People wonder why West Virginians distrust outsiders, and it is this: whenever we’re portrayed as a state, it’s as a bunch of racist hicks. Nobody can recall the horrible things happening that are portrayed in the movie, most likely because they never actually happened. The same goes double for the news media, who will always find our worst representatives, regardless of the news story being reported on. (In fifth grade, I had a teacher who warned us about media coverage - “They will always walk by every intelligible, reasonable person, and instead find the drunkest lowlife with the thickest accent they can put on the news.” At the time, I thought it was rubbish, but she was right.)

Here’s more, from an aggrieved West Virginian trying to understand the state’s relationship with racist thought. He acknowledges, as I do, the presence of racism, but as I do, observe that it is no worse here than anywhere else.

Obvious also are the different types of racism. One kind manifests itself as a hatred of everything that is defined by the individual as “the other.” Those people are around here, for sure. But there is also an awful lot of racism toward unknown masses but friendship with known quantities. In other words, the guy who says, “Grumble grumble grumble, black people,” but then warmly greets and converses and gets along with his black co-workers, neighbors, friends, whatever. (These are the people who also feel very suspicious of the every unknown person in the world.) I don’t know which is worse; maybe they’re both equally horrible.

But the world is a complex place. Reducing West Virginia to a cesspool of racism and ignoring its occurrence everywhere else seems absurd. If people want to believe that everybody from my home is a horrible, racist person, there’s little I can do to stop them, except to say that it both isn’t true and that there are as many people with horrible opinions in their own backyard.

Outrageous Poll Number from West Virginia

I’m skeptical, to say the least, about Obama enjoying an eight point lead in West Virginia. McCain’s shooting himself in the foot everywhere, but he couldn’t possibly lose the Mountain State. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Obama within striking distance.

I mean, anything’s possible, but its just so unlikely that we’d see Obama romp here…right?

West Virginians Get Killed In National Media

My beloved Editrix (if you’ve got a grammar question, she’s your girl) sent me an email this morning furious at Maureen Dowd’s latest column. In it, the usual tropes about West Virginia are trotted out: we’re isolated, we’re frightening, we do dumb things. It is nothing that any of us living here haven’t heard before. (For more, check out Editrix’s grammatical fury.)

Perhaps worse was what the Daily Show was able to put together last night. It was as cringe-inducing as anything I’ve seen about the state.

In fifth grade, I was taught to distrust any media source that comes into our fair state, because they inevitably search out the residents amongst us who are most likely to provide embarrassing commentary. It works out well when the national media comes to the state, walks by every reasonable person available, and interviews the most racist, ignorant redneck they can find, because it reaffirms the nationwide stereotypes about West Virginia while also allowing us to become all the more insular, while making us all the less likely to trust outsiders. Everybody wins (loses). See the Girl of Words aptly titled, Thanks, Douchebag Rednecks.

This happens every single time something newsworthy happens in West Virginia. From mine disasters to floods (does anything else newsworthy happen here?) we can always count on our most embarrassing citizens providing commentary for the national media.

My friend Mitch the Killer told me the other day that all I ever did was give readers reasons never to visit. Or, as he put it, “Here’s 78 reasons to hate West Virginia, and oh yeah, I still love the place.” In response, I’d like to make clear that we’re all not the mouth-breathing rednecks that you’ll see on your newscasts, the next time West Virginia finds itself in the news. (Maybe it’ll be “Racist Voters Trapped in Mine Collapse While Hiding From Flooding!”) We’re good, friendly people. But as with anywhere, there are those amongst just aren’t right. Unfortunately, they’re the ones you always see.

So visit West Virginia: We’re Mostly Right In The Head.

More on Clinton’s Win

Andrew Sullivan is acting surprised that so many “Democrats” in West Virginia voted for Bush in 2004. There’s a reason for that - the revolution of the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s, wherein “Southern Democrats” slowly became Southern Republicans? It never really reached West Virginia. We’re an isolated place, surrounded by mountains. Our Democrats are what you might describe today as stereotypical Republicans.

The only reason they stayed Democrats was union politics, but even a cursory glance at the state’s politics reveals as heavy slant toward pro-coal interests. There’s nothing about this state that says Democrats, and so this nonsense about West Virginia being some sort of bell-weather for the Democrats is ludicrous bullshit.

Yes, Clinton did well here, but does anybody genuinely believe that McCain couldn’t come to this state, especially with a Veep Candidates like Mike Huckabee in tow and trounce all over Clinton? Everybody is casting their assumptions onto the state without ever having spent any time here, and that includes most of the jackasses commenting in the last thread.

I can’t stress this enough - West Virginia isn’t important. We’re an outlier within national politics, and that’s the reason that our state can’t figure out a way to keep up with everybody else. There’s loving a place, and lord knows I love it here, and there’s being honest about it. We can be both.

West Virginia Matters? Naaaah

A lot of hilarious “coverage” around the internet today, acting as if Hillary Clinton’s win in West Virginia is some sort of big deal. Why these reporters can’t just admit that they’re desperate to make West Virginia mean something is beyond me. I recently heard a member of West Virginia University’s journalism faculty claim that reporters couldn’t just write the same stories over and over and over again, which obviously meant in her mind creating new stories to tell. Which is how we end up with ludicrous bullshit like “West Virginia Matters.”

I live here. Trust me: it doesn’t. It hasn’t ever mattered before, and it certainly won’t matter after today.

Yes, Hillary is going to win the state by some ridiculous margin because large numbers of my fellow West Virginians would rather vote for a woman than a black. Those are the facts. Clinton’s campaign will claim that this matters - “White people love me,” she’ll say, or something like it - but she’s lying because she’s desperate to reverse a trend in which she gets her ass-kicked by the relatively inexperienced Obama. Unfortunately, it is too late for any of that. Four more superdelegates went to Obama today. Is a big win in a poor, undereducated, overwhelmingly white state which has gone Republican in the last two elections really going to matter?

Of course not. Anybody claiming otherwise is lying through their teeth.

I love my home and I love my state, but it gets pretty irritating to hear people believing that we somehow matter more than we do.

The Ongoing Garrison-Bresch-Manchin-WVU Kerfluffle

Woo hoo! I just used “kerfluffle” in a headline. And just then again in a sentence. I win! I win!

I love my father very much. My mother too. They’re both fantastic people. Both want West Virginia University’s idiot president, Mike Garrison, to resign for his role in Heather Bresch’s illegitimate reception of an eMBA. Unfortunately, they’re not going to get what they want.

To believe Mike Garrison’s side of things, the following facts do not tell a story:
-Garrison got his job from Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s governor.
-Garrison was friends with Heather Bresch, Joe Manchin’s daughter.
-Garrison represented Mylan, a pharmaceutical company that currently employs Heather Bresch. (The company is owned by one of West Virginia University’s largest donors, Milan “Mike” Puskar.)
-Upon realizing that Heather Bresch had never actually earned an Executive Masters of Business Administration, Garrison’s chief of staff convened a meeting with several other higher ups from the University’s administration in which it was decided to pretend as if she had in fact earned it. This was promptly discovered, because predictably, the kinds of people who make it into WVU’s administration are complete morons.

Essentially, Mike Garrison wants you to believe that even though he can thank her father for his position, that even though he counts Bresch as a friend, that even though she is employed by one of the University’s most financially flush patrons, he had nothing to do with her receiving a degree that she hadn’t earned.

Let’s suppose I came to you and told you that story: would you believe it was at least potentially possible that Garrison had some influence over the outcome? Of course you would, because you’re not an idiot.

My parents aren’t idiots. They visualized the pieces, put the puzzle together, and can see the image: WVU is lead by an unqualified lunkhead who gives degrees away not caring a tinker’s cuss for the damage it does to the University’s reputation.

Unfortunately, West Virginia’s political aristocracy couldn’t give a good goddamn what people like my parents think. They have never cared what people like my parents think, or, for that matter, what anybody in West Virginia thinks. They always do exactly as they please, and play the, “But we’re West Virginians!” card whenever they get themselves into trouble.

For instance, sure, we could have had a qualified state treasurer to manage our money, but A. James Manchin was also available, and dammit, he was from the state! So we elected him and ended up losing $231 million dollars. (Or, you could have fun with Arch Moore, a former idiot governor who settled a $100 million lawsuit for $1 million instead, after the Buffalo Creek Flood. Actual West Virginians referred to the dam’s collapse as an “Act of God.” Instead of blaming the idiots who tried to dam hundreds of thousands of gallons of water with mud.)

Look, I love West Virginia, but would anybody seriously object if the city of Charleston burned to the ground with every single member of this state’s ruling elite inside? Yes, we’d be bad off for a time, waiting for special elections to replace the yahoos who currently pillage our state blind behind their constant song, “But we’re West Virginians!” But then, a week later, we’d have all new people, who for at least a time would be so uncoordinated that they couldn’t possibly be worse than the idiocracy we currently have running things.

As I said, I love my parents, but they’ve got to much faith in things if they think WVU’s president is going anywhere just because he’s a completely corrupt moron who does the will of his political patrons over the good sense that just anybody else might possess. Facts are facts. Truths are truths. West Virginia’s a painfully fucked up place, and this certainly isn’t going to be the scandal that fixes things.

Pictured above are ramps, part of West Virginia I like, one of the things I have to constantly think about whenever Garrison pops into my head.

Rodriguez Bolts For Michigan…

This is nothing more than a collection of thoughts about Rich Rodriguez’s decision to leave Morgantown for Ann Arbor.

-Got an email from my friend Rachel this morning, usually a mild-mannered person. Here it is, in its entirety:

Subject: Rich Rodriguez is a total fucking asshole! Body: See Subject Line.

-A lot of people will be sad that we’ve lost such a winning coach, which I understand, because I remember what it was like having Don “Coal’s Good” Nehlen doing the coaching. But, with the exception of the Sugar Bowl, we shouldn’t go around believing that Rodriguez really gave all that much to us. Yes, we won the Gator Bowl last year with a come-from-behind victory.

We lost Miami game when Rodriguez blitzed everyone on a fourth-and-long, allowing the first down and the momentum to go to Miami, depriving us of an enormous upset. We got eviscerated in bowl games too - Florida State and Maryland both ran roughshod over us. And Rodriguez, for all of his alleged brilliance, wasn’t particularly bright when it came to spotting talent. Bednarik had to be half-dead before he finally turned the offense over to Pat White, and Steve Slaton only got to run the ball because he performed well on the few occasions he was trusted with the ball.

Of course, there was also this. On the biggest stage with the best opportunity WVU has had to play for a national championship since 1993, Rodriguez couldn’t help but keep calling the same play, over and over and over and over and over again. When it didn’t work, he could not adjust. And so it was that our shot at the national championship disappeared.

-Michigan is going to have fun with Rodriguez. So too will their cheerleaders. Let’s not forget Rodriguez’s “brother”, who will always make things interesting. And let’s also not forget that Michigan cares about one thing: beating Ohio State. Rodriguez, with everything on the line, couldn’t be Pitt. Ohio State is no Pitt? If I lived in Colombus, I’d be celebrating the fact that I just won the next four or five rivalry games.

-Rumor has it that Rodriguez told his players that he tried to stay at WVU, but WVU wouldn’t “let” him. What RichRod meant was that he tried, for the second year in a row, to totally soak the University for more money and the school wouldn’t cave to his insane demands. Claiming that he wanted to stay to his players is as ugly and two-faced as it gets. He could have at least been honest with them. Of course, this is a man who cannot spell honest.

-Rodriguez also took two of his assistants with him to Michigan, meaning that he has basically left the coaching cupboard completely empty for our upcoming BCS game. It takes guts to completely abandon a team before an enormous game. According to that article, he’s taking other coaches too. In other words, here was a man so loyal to his school and his home-state that he plundered the athletic department upon leaving, thus abandoning his school, his home-state and all of his players. Good times.

-Finally, there is the issue of who takes over at WVU. Plenty of talk focuses on former Auburn coach Terry Bowden. He grew up in Morgantown, and has claimed it is his dream job. He also hasn’t coached in ten years. It’s a longshot, but here’s hoping WVU goes out on a limb and considers a coach capable of getting the best out of his players: Texas Tech’s Mike Leach. The man is an offensive genius who wouldn’t simply run Patrick White up the middle, hoping against hope that something worked out. He’d also have a shot at a BCS bowl game every single year, something he doesn’t have at Texas Tech by virtue of having to compete against Texas and Oklahoma annually.

Chances are, WVU makes the regressive choice with Bowden. But Leach could do great things with the offensive talents that we’ve got here. Here’s hoping he’s at least considered.

-As for Rodriguez? Rachel put it best - he is a total fucking asshole. The less said, the better.

A Quarter Well Spent

If there is anybody that hates Parking Tickets more than me, I’m baffled as to who it could be. So what should I see yesterday as I’m walking to meet a friend but one of Morgantown’s parking officers, peering at a parking meter and then slowly walking behind a car, preparing to ticket it. As I was walking, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a quarter, and in one quick move put it into the meter before the man could ticket the car.

This is, allegedly, illegal. However, I did it fast enough that the parking officer didn’t notice, and I kept on walking. Fortunately for me, he hadn’t yet punched the ticket into his computer, which meant he would have been giving out a ticket only after there was money in the meter. Hence, he couldn’t give the ticket, nor could he catch me because I was already halfway down the block when he realized what had happened.

Boo-yeah!

I take great pleasure in undermining Morgantown’s idiotic local government, and particularly our idiotic Parking Authority. Those people are horrible people. Ruining even two minutes of their day puts a smile on my face, even now just thinking about it.

…Keeps On Ticking

My photo show is over. School is approaching. I have responsibilities coming completely out of my ears. The question is, what now? My camera is sitting in front of me, unused, untouched, lonely. Driving home from the golf course today I saw photos that needed to be taken. But will this be it? Photos of crumbling places for the rest of my life?

Meanwhile, the weather here is hot. Ridiculously hot. I’m anxiously awaiting, for the first time in my life, the fall. I hate the fall. I hate November. But it has to be better than this painful heat.