Monday, October 6, 2008

Calm Down


"Saturday Night Live" did a Palin/Biden debate sketch the other night. The character who played Joe Biden said the following:

"I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and that's as hard-scrabble a place as you're going to find. I'll show you around sometime and you'll see -- it's a hell hole. An absolute jerkwater of a town. You couldn't stand to spend a weekend there. It's just an awful, awful sad place, filled with sad, desperate people with no ambition. Nobody, I mean nobody, but me, has ever come out of that place. It's a genetic cesspool. So don't be telling me that I'm part of the Washington elite, because I come from the absolute worst place on earth -- Scranton, Pennsylvania. And Wilmington, Delaware, is not much better."


Okay, it was unpleasant, and it reinforces every negative stereotype about Scranton. The area has been getting a little positive attention lately, mostly due to the Biden candidacy, that of Hillary Clinton earlier this year, and the hideously unfunny sit-com "The Office." Full disclosure: I laughed at the SNL sketch.

"Forbes" magazine called Scranton one of the fastest dying cities in the nation. That story did far, far more damage than the goofballs at SNL could provide.

I'm waiting for the usual parade of professional dullards, elected officials, and "community leaders" to come to the area's defense. These are the same people who do nothing as they watch good jobs disappear-- the people who cheer when we get a new dollar store, doughnut shop, or a warehouse that takes up lots of room, but provides few jobs.

It's history. Let's not over-react. I even received a "breaking news" e-mail from the local newspaper about the SNL sketch. By the way, the "breaking news" advisory arrived in my "in" box a mere ten hours after the sketch aired. Sorry. The story "broke" a long time ago.


Scranton has been kicked in the teeth before. It'll happen again. We'll survive.