Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Wait, we're the dumb ones?

When the Girl was studying in Ireland, I got a lot of mileage from making all sorts of cracks about her new hometown of Dublin.

Drunk jokes were just too easy, so I went the way of Lucky Charms, Leprechaun Presidential elections and worshiping the Pope-tato.

So, when it's time to take my lumps about being an idiot who was a product of the American educational system, I usually just suck it up and prepare my next round of ugly Americanism.

So, when I see that this is still happening, it drives me nuts. The international community thinks that we're a downtrodden, blue collar violent cesspool of stabbings and despair?

Who do they think we are? Detroit?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm continuously shocked at how people perceive Chicago even on the East and West Coasts, much less foreign countries. We seem to get lumped in with the declining industrial Midwestern cities such as Detroit and Cleveland even though our city assets and economic demographics are much more like New York or San Francisco. I've encountered multiple people who have traveled from out of town to Chicago for the first time comment that they were surprised that (a) the city is so clean and sophisticated and (b) you can't see the other side of Lake Michigan (seriously). I get the impression that people think we live in dirty factory town next to a pond and some cornfields. I guess the one thing that you can say is that Chicago usually leaves a great impression on people when they actually get here - it's just frustrating that the expectations were so low in the first place.