alright, california, tough love time.
you think you're so cool, don't you?
well i got news for you, buddy boy: you ain't.
but i'll give you a bit of a break. you're from a large, unorthodox family. i mean number 31 of 50 kids? after the first 13, let's face it, your folks were pretty much phoning it in. you can see it in the name, i mean at first it was like, new york you're named after mom, new hampshire you're named after mom. by the time they got to us it was like, uh, you're named after some amazon person or place...thing. p.s. puerto rico is now called superbowl island.
and lets talk about your folks. all dads, weren't they?
funny that. just sayin'.
i never heard about any founding mothers.
so here we are, a middle child from a large, motherless, religious family... acting out for attention.
if the US were a sitcom, it would be full house, and california would be stephanie. sure she's the hot one now, but stephanie? come on, we can do better than that. shit, in the popularity polls we're running neck and neck with kimmy gibbler, who, for all intents and purposes is, lets say, canada, our annoying neighbor to the north.
i can see them now, ruining our garden party by letting their pet ostrich loose in the yard.
gibbler, you hoser! get this bird out of michigan and take your stoner boyfriend with you!
and if american history were a sitcom, california is the season where they go on a trip to disneyland. that crap season right between the midwest, where the audience starts to flag, and that last season, where they totally retool, bring in alaska, that weird cousin they never mentioned before, and they all go to hawaii and jump the shark.
everyone hates our season! the disneyland season sucks!
sure uncle jessie and aunt becky share a magical kiss in front of sleeping beauty's castle, while the fireworks go off. but eventually we all go to disneyland and realize, sleeping beauty's castle is like the size of my apartment, there's fireworks every night, and this churro cost me $12.50! this isn't magical at all.
the point is, california's mystique is sort of an illusion.
everyone talks about how great we are for american politics, but oddly enough, no one ever says, "hey asshole, thanks for the reagan administration!" or "you know, nixon really sucked!"
we were a huge part of the political careers of (arguably) two of the worst presidents of all time.
we also get a lot of credit for pioneering environmental standards. but, while we did champion CAFE in the nineties, we also basically threw it out as soon as the auto and petroleum industries puffed out their chests (then coughed up a lung all over LA).
the world thinks we, california, are some kind of gay mecca.
untrue.
perhaps the bay area, but more likely just san francisco, is a gay mecca. on this fact we seem to have a selective understanding of how the world works.
granted we are home to gay mecca. we also do have a large population of open minded, progressive liberals; democrat, republican, or other. but california is a massive place, and disparately diverse in comparison to every other state. we have more people, more cars, more money, and mo' problems than any state in the union. if the bay area was a separate state, do you have any doubt that same sex marriage would have been legalized years, if not decades ago? what about pot? if soCal and norCal were separate entities, norCal's economy would be far less than half what it is now. we also wouldn't have immigration issues with mexico, and soCal probably wouldn't have marijuana policy issues. if the central valley seceded, the rest of us would have to import most of our produce and livestock. if everything south of ventura county suddenly became the people's republic of los angeles, no one would be flocking to bakersfield for the women. i never heard anyone say, "long beach...it's the cheese" or "the hip hop scene in monterey is off the hook." the skiing in san jose is terrible, and you can't find decent network reception in south shore, let alone a booming tech industry.
we've got a lot of stuff going on out here on the left coast (not to be confused with left leaning). when we present ourselves to the world, we pick and choose the things we put on our resumé. let's put it this way: within california, if the dodgers won the world series, you can believe that giants fans wouldn't go around bragging that california has the best team in baseball. and outside of california there are plenty of people who want to be big hollywood movie stars, but odds are, it ain't gonna happen if you move to fresno, or yreka (it's a place).
so it doesn't surprise me when something like prop8 happens. most of california is not exactly a poppin' lgbt dating scene, and even less of california is generally accepting of that lifestyle at all.
to put that in political terms, more districts came in for mccain in 2008 (24 of 53), than came in against prop8 (19).
basically, we just tell the world whatever they want to hear about california, like if you move to california you can have a same sex wedding at your sprawling beach front estate, and brangelina and robert downy jr will be there, and everyone will be smoking pot and driving cars that run on unicorn farts, and emit rainbows.
but this isn't any more true than saying, if i just aim my car east eventually harvard will issue me an honorary degree in red sox studies, and i'll eat clam chowder every morning while i ride the subway through central park to my job at the white house.
so if the jig wasn't up on california before, it is now. its a hoax, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
come on over if you want, but we're not enjoying it as much as the rest of the country thinks, that's just our laugh track you're hearing, and most of those people are dead by now.
*no homework tonight.
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