Think Pennsylvania, and what comes to mind? Probably iconic moments like Rocky jogging up the stairs. The Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence. Julius Erving floating to the basket and Mean Joe Greene downing a Coke. And maybe the endless wedding scene that opens “The Deer Hunter.”
And, of course, James Carville.
Huh? James Carville? Surely you’re asking, isn’t Carville, like, a Southerner, a Rajin’ Cajun’? Indeed. But the Democratic strategist and all-purpose pundit has become woven into Pennsylvania lore as much as, say, Punxsutawney Phil or a Geno’s cheesesteak.
Carville — who helped elect Robert Casey Pennsylvania governor in 1986 and Harris Wofford a U.S. Senator from the Keystone State in 1991 — once wryly and dryly observed that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.
Quite a nice gift that Carville gave Pennsylvanians — a snappy one liner for folks to quickly grasp the state’s political and demographic complexity.
And what have Pennsyvlanians given Carville in return?
Grief. It seems that Pennsylvania has been angry ever since.
Check out the coverage the last few weeks alone as Pennsylvania gears up for the April 22 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It may be the biggest grudge match the state has seen since Gettysburg.
Consider the Harrisburg Patriot-News’ Anne McGraw Reeves:
… let’s retire talking head and Democrat operative James Carville’s description of Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in between.”
That is just so 1980s.
Believe it or not, James, things have changed since you delivered that cute little sound bite during former Gov. Bob Casey’s first gubernatorial campaign.
We have Starbucks now! Restaurant Row! Casinos!
Or Philadelphia radio talk show Michael Smerconish, who wrote in the Philadelphia Daily News:
James Carville. Yeah, we know what he said about Alabama. Still, it’s no reason to shout out “Free Bird” in central Pennsylvania. Better you reference Bon Jovi. If you want to establish some street cred with the locals, tell Tim Russert you can’t appear on “Meet the Press” because of a time conflict with Sid Mark’s “Sundays with Sinatra.”
Or York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento:
Carville owes the good people of Alabama an apology. Here in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania, we prefer the more descriptive term “Pennsyltucky,” although neither appellation does the central part of this great commonwealth justice, as we may have a much larger fleet of Confederate-flag-adorned pickup trucks than either Alabama or Kentucky.
Ah, Pennsyltucky. Pennsylvania’s hinterlands may have not yet gotten the word, but Pennsyltucky has earned an entry in Wikipedia:
Pennsyltucky is a slang word to refer to the rural part of the state of Pennsylvania outside the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, more specifically applied to the mountainous central region. Less common is the term “Pennsylbama.”
There’s that Carville influence again. There’s just no escaping. No wonder they’ve got an enormous chip on their shoulder, the size of Alabama.
Let’s check in with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Salena Zito:
Clinton strategist James Carville once described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh to the west and Alabama in the middle. I beg to differ. It is Philadelphia and its collar counties to the east with a classic Midwest state from there to the border of Ohio.
And the Reading Eagle’s Al Walentis seemed a bit peeved when he wrote:
This won’t be retail politicking like Iowa or New Hampshire, where candidates introduce themselves to voters face-to-face. Pennsylvania has more than 12 million people, seven media markets and a terrain so schizophrenic that James Carville once described it as “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews chortled last night when he described his boyhood visits to Reading and discovered there were country & western songs on the jukebox in a diner.
You can excuse the attitude, perhaps, when big-foot national condescension comes into play. The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson covered the big 2006 Senate showdown this way:
As if to confirm Carville’s thesis, when I attended the Mifflin County Youth Fair and Hog Auction last Saturday in the company of Bob Casey, the state treasurer and the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, there was a pickup truck in the parking lot with an illustration, in the front license-plate frame, of a nekkid woman in front of a Confederate flag.
Does anyone align themselves with Carville’s pithy, innocous observation?
You’d have to chack out the American Spectator for that. Here’s Pennsylvania resident Jeffrey Lord writing in the conservative magazine:
What I will assume Mr. Carville was trying to say is that to outsiders who think of Pennsylvania in terms of its two largest cities, there is a lot more going on here politically than meets the eye. Let’s face it, a state that can elect devoted pro-lifers (Republican Rick Santorum and his successor, Democrat Bob Casey, Jr.) to sit alongside a long time pro-choicer (Republican Arlen Specter) as Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators is most assuredly not, say, New York or New Jersey, its northern and eastern neighbors.
As Pennsylvanians go, that’s practically an endorsement of Carville.
It might just be easier to challenge Pennsylvanians this way: OK smarties, you don’t like the elegant simplicity of Carville’s equaton? Then explain to us what a Keystone is.
Or the Keystones could just cop out. As Pennsylvania political mavens Dr. G. Terry Madonna and Dr. Michael Young once wrote:
James you need a new definition for Pennsylvania. Between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is just a lot more Pennsylvania.
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