Back From Ohio and Still Shaking……

OK. So after a week in the solidly red state of Ohio I have to admit that I had forgotten what the experience is like. Here are some highlights:

• My cousin informs me that his 2 year old son will not be allowed into my other cousin’s house where my daughter and her new found 3rd cousin friend are playing because “my boy ain’t going to be playing with no fucking dolls.”
• That same cousin’s wife tells me, in all seriousness and feeling very open-minded, that she thinks Adam Sandler is funny, “even though he’s a Jew.”
• A stranger that my brother and I played golf with goes on at length about how even though Bush may have made a few “small mistakes with this Iraq thing” it’s excusable since he’s had to spend “so much time cleaning up the mess that Clinton left behind.”
• Any public place with a television that is not showing ESPN is showing Fox News.
• My parents don’t have cable, so they only get 6 channels. Two of them are full time religious networks owned by mega-churches.
• And the countryside is littered with billboards for these mega-churches, crusades, biblical quotes, anti-choice slogans and other nonsense.

On the upside there are a lot of indoor water parks and roller coasters in the part of the state I was in.

My parents are considered very liberal for the area (although I would consider them moderates) and I’m stunned they haven’t been run out of the area by a crowd of pitchfork and torch wielding morons. 

So to recap: I had a great time seeing my parents and family, showing my daughter the places I grew up and going to theme parks.

I had a terrible time being reminded of the reasons I couldn’t wait to leave in the first place. It was an eye-opener. Living safely ensconsed in the liberal stronghold of MA has warped my view of things. If Ohio is any indication, the country is most definatly NOT swinging left. Or maybe Ohio is just a lost cause.

Whatever the case, conservatives in my homestate make the ones we have here look like Kennedys.