“you can go look at my routing schedule and I was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chandler, Arizona. I was in Fargo, North Dakota, Sioux Falls – much smaller, conservative areas, lots of them. And those people were, I think, elated, so thankful that a guy did come to their town and say those things, because they’re in the minority. And I grew up in that minority. I grew up in the South, in Roswell, Georgia, and it was heavily white, Baptist, conservative. And the idea that somebody would come there and say those things that I said created an atmosphere where some people would walk out, and suddenly they weren’t in the minority. For an hour and a half, they were the majority”
—David Cross on why his comedy tour – Making America Great Again! – pissed off people right and left
David Cross makes the same kind of point that I keep saying albeit to a different end: if you’ve lived your whole life in San Francisco or LA or NYC I’d wager you have zero idea what most of the United States is actually like.
And short visits to the interior don’t count. There is nothing wrong with that on its face. We all have the limitations of our own points of view. The problem is when you start expecting to extrapolate your world out to map onto the rest of America.
As if Tulsa is just SF with smaller buildings. And the reason that is a problem is that it ignores that a lot of those places have a ton of catching up to do to break free of even middle-late 20th century attitudes.
Not that there aren’t progressive pockets throughout, but the vast majority out there aren’t just going to accept 4th wave feminism (or what have you) just because we yell at them about it. And yes I am guilty of it too. This isn’t to say we stop lobbying for what we believe in, but we do need to recognize that those things are by no means a given everywhere else.
—jason malmberg
Flommist Jason Malmberg is a simple man who believes in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art sometimes. Copyright © 2016 Jason Malmberg.
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