Children’s stuffed animal zoo at Taoyuan International Airport
Bill Maher (Mar)had a wonderful time showing folks what he really thought about us poor slobs out here in flyover country. We know what the elites think about us smelly Walmart people but Mahre gave an interesting look at what we have all considered cultural snobbery run wild. Maher’s take was that folks out here in the middle of the country or in the so called “red states’ are not mad at the folks in the big cities that are leftists; we want to be them. We know it is true about folks in Minneapolis. They have an identity crisis that gets worse every time the snow flies. They want to be New York or Los Angeles and the way things are going they are getting there. They are into the realm of being like Chicago right now. Just a few days ago Somali gangs shot each other up and five people were injured and one died. Just like Chicago you really have to search to find the news on that. Just like the bigger leftists cities there are parts of Minneapolis that are visitor free zones. A few years ago the city advertisers showed there sad “wannabe” colors when they took to advertising Minneapolis as the “mini apple”. Minneapolis traffic is getting to the “you can’t get there from here” zone and there are wonderful restaurants that have to shut down because no one can find parking spots so that they can eat. The politics is such that many businesses have left because of the minimum wage thing that many cities have struggled with but never seem to learn
Maher’s point was that the big cities in the blue states were cool and we are not. “We have chef Wolfgang Puck”, he said, “they have chef Boyardee.” Evidently they have cool clubs and we have line dancing. They go to analysis and we go to church. He never got around to what we don’t have. We don’t have to get maps to tell us where the human waste is piled so deep that folks are warned to stay away and we don’t have to wade through piles of needles and drug paraphernalia; at least not yet. If we keep thinking that the Maher types of this world are role models it might soon happen.
These kinds of folks never talk about the places that they have so messed up that people are leaving them in droves and they don’t see the things that they once thought so cool are jokes to most of the world. Folks like Maher are so busy navel gazing and Trump hating that they don’t see how the rest of the world is passing them by and in many ways looking at them as backwards and passé. I don’t know why I did it but I watched a movie the other night called “Crazy Rich Asians”. It is a romantic comedy of sorts and the genre that I like least in movies, but this one was pretty cool. Anyway it brought back memories of my trip to Singapore years ago and the fact that here is a megalopolis that is clean, friendly, easy to get around in, with a remarkable airport and wonderful people and everything looks shiny and new. New York on the other hand looks seamy and old and decrepit almost everywhere you go. There is a line in the movie where the “crazy rich Asians” land at the airport in Singapore – Changi, and one of the stars of the movie says, “Changi has a butterfly garden. All J.F.K. has is salmonella and despair”. My trip to Taiwan reinforced the image of a sad and forlorn “Seattle Grunge” airport and bright an shining Narita and Taoyuan.
Maybe the Maher’s of this world would do well to consider that folks visit the blue state cities, after they get their inoculations of course, not because we want to be them, but because of the curiosity over what they have become. No one leaves their heart in San Francisco anymore, because they are too busy checking to see what they walked in on Fishermans Wharf. People don’t go to Hollywood anymore to see “Stars” because there aren’t any left. We go to watch the freaks wandering around pretending that they are somebody. People don’t go to L.A. anymore because they might get typhus. Think of that! It is 2019 and there is typhus in LA. People who go to New York City don’t come home feeling jealous, but relieved, and maybe a bit itchy. People, according to a recent newspaper and television report from Seattle, don’t go there to wish they lived there but to catch a glimpse of what it is before it dies.
So to the sad comedians with the same old hackneyed lines and the obsequious attitudes towards denizens of a world where no one knows who they are, might want to consider a few things. Maybe, just maybe, you are the to be pitied because you are busy playing someone else, to the point where you don’t know who are. Then consider the idea that maybe people don’t want to be you. Then consider the idea that folks might pay attention to you in order to figure out what not to be and definitely what not to think..
