Best article comment ever, & thoughts prompted thereby

I think doggy things are great, but I don't know who's going to pay $25 a year to use Springfield's new off-leash dog park when you can leash up Fido and go to Phelps Grove for free. (Be sure to get a poop-scoopy bag from the dispenser at the park entrance. That way, my dog won't try to eat your dog's poopoo. T.y.)

It sounds like an idea whose time came in 2005. Accordingly, news of the dog park has prompted one of the best comments ever on the News-Leader's website, by a user called riverright:

I'm so proud of Springfield! Art musee-ums, dog parks, $3 coffee, a vibrant downtown. Why, it's almost possible to close your eyes and pretend you're not in fly-over land. Now if only we could just get rid of some of these pesky local yokels (and enough big-city-style crime might do the trick) we'd become a Blue State!
11/22/2008 8:27:52 AM

What can you say? Kudos for a witty smackdown.

Riverright isn't just parroting right-populist talking-points. To some extent, s/he is... right. After all, back in August, 43 city and chamber bigwigs went on a fact-finding trip to Madison, Wisconsin, Holy See of the Blue Midwest. They wouldn't have made the trip without a reason.

But Madison, in addition to welcoming transgender vegans and such, is also much wealthier and more filled with venture capital than Springfield. Don't we associate those latter two qualities with Republican redness?

And what about this pesky NYT map showing how pretty much everywhere in the country, except the South, is now voting bluer than in 2004? That's true even in several states lost by Obama.... like broken-bellwether Missouri.

The truth is, unpretentious folksiness is no indicator of common sense, and cultural hauteur is no guarantee of intellect. Reality is much more complex than satiric soundbites or gassy partisan gas.