{"id":476,"date":"2004-10-14T10:14:24","date_gmt":"2004-10-14T14:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/10\/14\/massachusetts-the-new-four-letter-word\/"},"modified":"2004-10-14T10:14:24","modified_gmt":"2004-10-14T14:14:24","slug":"massachusetts-the-new-four-letter-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/10\/14\/massachusetts-the-new-four-letter-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts – the New Four-Letter Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I actually intended for this blog to be full of random nothingness and humorous observations of my (boring) life, but I guess it’s inevitable that politics would come up since it’s an election year. I’ve noticed the same thing in countless other blogs that never intended to be political but have lately ranted about one issue or another.<\/P>
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I watched the third and final presidential debate last night and G.W. Bush uttered the word “Massachusetts” numerous times…and every single time he intended for it to be an insult. Since when is Massachusetts a bad thing? I mean, if it wasn’t for us, we might still not even be a country. We started the revolution to separate from England (Boston Tea Party, Battle of Bunker Hill, Lexington\/Concord). And over the 375 years since the pilgrims first arrived here, we’ve provided other benefits to society: America’s first library, first public schools, first subway system. We are the birthplace to some of America’s most significantly historic people such as Ben Franklin, John Adams, John F. Kennedy, Alexander Graham Bell. We’re also home to some significant inventions\/discoveries such as ether (first anesthesia to knock you out during surgery), the telephone, the internet. Today, bio-tech research facilities and universities in Massachusetts continue to discover new things and provide research to elminate diseases in the future. We have a history of forward-thinking that, I believe, has benefited this country.<\/P>
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And Bush uses the word Massachusetts as if it’s derogatory. Even worse, he prefers to add another word he considers negative: liberal (“Kerry is the liberal senator from Massachusetts”). According to the American Heritage Dictionary, liberal is defined as “not limited to or by established traditional, orthodox or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others”<\/P>
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THAT’S A BAD THING? What the fuck? It’s wrong to be open to progress? It’s wrong to be tolerant of others?<\/P>
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Maybe I’m just clueless. I’ve read over the years about how Massachusetts is ‘way left’ of the spectrum; how we are unlike any other state in the country. Is that true? I’m asking my readers from other parts of the country to pipe in and comment here. What do people from your state think of us? Are we perceived as a bunch of ex-hippie, earthy, granola-eating, gay-loving peace-niks? <\/P>
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It’s funny, because living here, I see the opposite. I think Massachusetts is still incredibly puritanical. I mean, if I see our state as being so uptight – what must it really be like in the rest of the country? I’m scared.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I actually intended for this blog to be full of random nothingness and humorous observations of my (boring) life, but I guess it’s inevitable that politics would come up since it’s an election year. I’ve noticed the same thing in countless other blogs that never intended to be political but have lately ranted about one issue or another. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}