The Truth about Massachusetts

Why, it’s paradise! There are gleaming white trucks that play happy music all the time and on warm summer evenings they hand out ice cream. That’s the assessment of one-time Baystater, now inside-the-Beltway columnist E.J. Dionne in today’s WashPost who is clearly lost in some nostalgic time warp:

My blue-collar hometown of Fall River, Mass., was solidly Democratic, but as conservative in its values as you could imagine -- family, church, neighborhood, hard work and patriotism were the drill. I'm grateful I grew up in such a pro-family environment. That's why the parody of Massachusetts as an exotic, left-wing place infuriates me.

Here in Western Massachusetts, I often hear the lesbians in Northampton making the same complaints on their way to Mass a flag burning.

This is about more than John Kerry, who can defend himself. It's about how certain forms of cheap bigotry don't even get challenged. The right wing's attack on Massachusetts is a sign of intellectual laziness. It's easier to parody a people and a place than to defend a set of ideas.

This past Sunday, DNC chair Terry McAwful took pains to show off his spiffy “ABB” pin, standing for “Anyone but Bush.” Meanwhile, the Democrats are in the throes of choosing a candidate based entirely on that person’s “electability” with nary a thought for ideology. The Democrats have no issues to bring to the table other than “not Bush” and yet somehow they’re the party of intellectual vitality. Please.