September 27, 2004

Would the Real America Please Stand Up

Found a lovely post in the Gladflyer this morning:

The Washington Post is in the midst of a somewhat somewhat interesting series offering a portrait of a young man struggling with his homosexuality as he grows up in Oklahoma, not exactly the most welcoming and open-minded of places. But the title they give to the series is an abomination:

"Young and Gay in Real America"

Excuse me? "Real America"? As they say in the Garden State, where I hail from, fuck you.

Sorry to abandon my ordinarily measured tone, but I am so goddamn tired of being told that places where there are lots of Republicans are "really" American and places where there are lots of Democrats are, well, something else
.


You see this all the time. Rural areas and the middle of the country are "Real" and the big cities and the coasts are something else. I've lived in different parts of California my whole life. I grew up rural, went to school and worked in big cities and am doing grad school in a mid-sized city. Now tell me which one was the "Real" America.

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