RECENTLY, I WROTE A COLUMN ASKING WHETHER ILLINOIS OR NEW YORK HAD THE MOST AWFUL POLITICAL CULTURE. ILLINOIS WON. OF COURSE, WE GOT MANY IRRITATED COMMENTS FROM RESIDENTS OF ILLINOIS, OFFENDED BY THE SUGGESTION THAT NEW YORK WAS EVEN IN THEIR LEAGUE. THEY DEMANDED TO KNOW HOW MANY EX-GOVERNORS OF NEW YORK HAD PASSED THROUGH THE PENAL SYSTEM.
New York Times, February 13, 2010
By GAIL COLLINS
Recently, I wrote a column asking whether Illinois or New York had the most awful political culture. Illinois won, eliciting many cries of reader outrage.
“What about Texas?”
“As a resident of New Jersey, I was insulted that you omitted the Garden State from this article. Why do New Yorkers always underrate us?”
“Oh, come on! Winner hands-down is Florida!”
“Pound for pound, neither New York or Illinois can touch Rhode Island.”
“There is a little Yankee ethnocentrism going on here. Surely South Carolina ...”
It’s heartening, in these soulless times, to see that state spirit rings so strong from sea (“Don’t forget Maryland!”) to shining sea. (“Government in Hawaii is easily as awful as any other state.”)
Not to mention the ever-surging American can-do spirit. (“Idaho does not have the same totally dysfunctional political system as New York and Illinois, but we’re working on it.”)
A number of people wrote in to nominate Virginia, all of them citing the recent House passage of a bill to protect people from having microchips planted in their bodies against their will. The bill’s sponsor told The Washington Post that he was concerned the chips could be a “mark of the beast” that would be used by the Antichrist at the end of days.
Actually, for this contest I was thinking more along the line of illegal behavior. But we can definitely consider a future competition for Legislation That Gives Us Pause.
Californians were upset that their state didn’t win, given its epic problems. (“People worry that Greece is bankrupt — hah!”)
It’s certainly true that when it comes to finances, California is the new Mississippi — the place that all the other states are glad to have around because it means that they can’t come in worse than 49th. And the voters are definitely in a terrible mood. Many Americans are ticked off at their governors these days. However, Californians not only blame theirs for bad state services; they also complain that he no longer looks all that great in a bathing suit.
Of course, we got many irritated comments from residents of Illinois, most of whom were offended by the suggestion that New York was even in their league. (“Are you kidding? It’s Illinois in a walk.”) They demanded, rather haughtily, to know how many ex-governors of New York had passed through the penal system in recent years. “We have almost four,” one reader bragged, counting the Blagojeviches before they’re hatched.
Picking the worst political culture is tricky since you always wonder if the states with the most politicians in handcuffs are the most corrupt or just the ones with the most efficient law enforcement system.
Self-image also matters a lot. Connecticut’s former Republican governor, John Rowland, went to jail for political corruption in 2005. But even though he went up the river right behind the mayors of Bridgeport (corruption) and Waterbury (s*x with minors), most of the populace seemed to regard this as a temporary bad patch in an otherwise rather normal and well-ordered march through history.
In some states, people don’t want to think of their government as a den of thieves. While in others, nothing makes residents happier than new evidence of the awfulness of their elected officials. When I worked in Connecticut years ago, one of the former Assembly leaders strangled his wife and dumped her body into the family swimming pool. Everyone thought it was terrible, but nobody saw it as part of a trend. If that happened in New York, people would nod sagely and start swapping stories of other politicians they knew who had done in their spouses or murdered someone in a body of water.
Of course, we should try to figure out how to make the evil-doing go away rather than reveling in it. Several readers triumphantly noted that both New York and Illinois are blue states and concluded that liberalism breeds corruption. But nobody who saw what happened when the Republicans won a majority in Congress can delude themselves into imagining that you can’t demand graft and tax cuts at the same time.
A Chicago reader said he was so frustrated with the Illinois Democrats that he asked himself whether the last Republican governor had done better. “Then I remembered that he was in jail.”
In New York, at least, the problem seems to center in the State Legislature, which flourishes in a hothouse of utter voter indifference. If the day ever dawns that one-fifth of the voters are able to identify their state senator, a new world order will arrive.
Until then, I would like to see all legislators be required to live in a large dormitory with lumpy beds whenever they’re in their state capital. And to eat all their meals in a cafeteria that serves a lot of chipped beef.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Saturday, February 13th 2010 at 10:14AM
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