The great liberal E. J. Dionne: "The Truth About Massachusetts"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7220-2004Feb2.html

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, February 3, 2004; Page A19

Can't supporters of the Bush administration think of something more original than issuing fatwas against "Massachusetts Liberals"? Does this President Bush honestly think that if he ends up facing John Kerry this fall he can just rerun his dad's campaign of 16 years ago against Michael Dukakis?

As John Edwards likes to say about almost everything, this is personal for me. 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.

My state is full of cities and towns such as Fall River -- Lawrence and Pittsfield, Fitchburg and Greenfield, Worcester and New Bedford. I'm sorry, but people who think Massachusetts is a culturally or politically demented place have never been to Massachusetts.

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.

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A stirring defense of his native state against the Rethugs "cheap bigotry." A great read!

[isbister]

1. You know another George thought Massachusetts

was too liberal.

We threw his tea in the ocean, kicked him in the rear end and sent him back to where he came from...

George II will be sent home, too.

[Monte Carlo]

2. As an MA native, I think this article makes a lot of good points.

The People's Republic of Massachusetts is not the workers' paradise it is stereotyped to be. It votes solidly Democratic, and both houses of the state legislature are held by veto-proof Democratic majorities, but a solid group of them are anything but guilty liberals.

Bush and Karl Rove is mistaken to think he can treat Kerry the way Dukakis was in '88. He will not submit to this cheap bigotry.

[polmaven]

3. Other than his description

of family, church, neighborhood, hard work and patriotismas strictly "conservative values", it is a good column. I take exception to the inference that true liberals cannot be family oriented, church going, hard working, patriotic good neighbors. These are all values espoused by Jesus, who, IMHO, was an unvarnished liberal.

[flpoljunkie]

4. Dionne means that family values do not belong only to "conservatives"

And we should no longer let the Rethugs get away with this damnable lie.

As John Edwards likes to say about almost everything, this is personal for me. 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.

[semass]

5. Living in the author's hometown...

I can tell you Fall River is overwhelmingly Catholic, ethnic ( mostly Portuguese, French-Canadian and Irish) and votes overwhelmingly for its' 2 liberal congressmen Barney Frank and Jim McGovern.

[NewHampster]

6. Ok, I Guess You Guys Win - Here's to Kerry

[bicentennial_baby]

7. Greenfield?

I guess he has'nt been here in a good long while, 'cause it has virtually nothing in common with those towns. Big ups to Gfield though!