Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Kathy Sage, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Melvern, Kansas, on the discovery that one of her neighbors killed and cut open the womb of an expectant mother to steal the newborn:
"You read about this stuff," she said. "It blows you away when it's here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles."
Dear Kathy Sage,
I don't suppose you knew when you woke up this morning that you would by sundown express to the Associated Press one of the most vile sentiments ever accidentally connected with a human tragedy. But there it is. You've done it. Now what?
What can you possibly say to the 18 million people that you believe are more capable of doing this than your fellow Kansans, one of whom has actually confessed to the crime? What can you possibly say to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, that you used her death as a zinger in the culture wars?
It "blows you away" when it's "here," and apparently it doesn't blow you away when it's elsewhere, particularly the two places you named. You think this sort of thing is de rigueur on Park Avenue and Rodeo Drive, or even 110th Street or Piru Street? What does it feel like to be a proud American, and yet to have such amazing contempt for a large swath of us that you felt compelled to say the above in response to a local tragedy?
Allow me to be unkind for a moment. Your town, the AP tells us, has a population of 420. The only thing that passes for a coherent moral philosophy in our country is that the marketplace is the most reliable measure of competitive merit. Eighteen million people choose to live in New York and Los Angeles; 420 choose to live in Melvern, Kansas. Eighteen million people live daily with the ridiculous additional cost, inconvenience, crime and filth of big city living, and yet they choose it. The overwhelming majority of them have never cut a living baby out of a dying woman. In fact, right now I'd say their ratio probably fares well in comparison to Melvern's, which stands at 419:1.
I'm being unfair. Melvern doubtless has its charms, one of which was, until recently, that the odds were against having a murderer in your midst. Alas, it is true that NYC and LA are at a disadvantage there, by sheer statistics. And yet their quality of life seems to be beating Melvern's by the only measure available in our society. The next time a crackhead dies trying to get another piece of rock in Bushwick, will his last earthly thought will be regret that he never had the chance to see God's Green Acre, Melvern, Kansas?
I'm sorry that you took your one opportunity to express your shock and grief as a way to piss on 18 million strangers you probably still fear more than the woman who perpetrated this crime. I mean no personal ill will, because I'm willing to attribute the above to a slip of the tongue. But the next time there's a tragedy in the heartland, don't fucking drag us into it because you think a little piece of our hellhole has leaked into your paradise. The children of Andrea Yates and Susan Smith as well as countless others who die in senseless heartland crimes don't find it all that blissful, and would not have felt their deaths would have been more sensibly venued in LA or NYC.
Regards,
Atticus Grinch
San Francisco, California (pop. 751,682)
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Dear Atticus:
Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Or, at the minimum, that you are reading too much into Ms. Sage's statement.
If you examine the statement closely, all it really does is reaffirm the intuitive grasp of statistics possessed by all Red Staters. If you think about it, why yes, if this kind of freakish, senseless tragedy were to happen, the odds are far greater that it would happen in New York or LA than in Podunk, Kansas. I'd say that, barring outside factors*, the chances are roughly 18,000,000 to 420 that this would be the case.
If you consider the statement that way, it has nothing to do with the culture wars (unlike, say, your response), the nature of people who live in The United States of Canada, or any of the other crap. Given that the person uttering the statement was probably a simple Red Stater ambushed by a big-city reporter, I would be loath to subscribe any evil to her comment.
All the best,
ILNS
A random Heartland metro area with a population over 1 million
& formerly of a Red State
* Let's save, for the sake of brevity, the argument over whether the environments in KS or NY/LA tend to be more likely to breed people who commit such awful crimes.
P.S. Susan Smith was from South Carolina and Andrea Yates was from Texas, so let's leave the Heartland out of this.
