Still Foxy After All These Years
FNC doesn't look 26. And these two states wish they were ranked at least 26!
Happy Friday, Okay History friends! We did it. We are now in the first week of October. It’s 48 days until Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is not the word I choose to use regarding what happened on this day in United States history. No, Thanks is not even a sentence I would shout out on my social media platforms, so hundreds of my bots could ignore me.
Unless it was a sarcastic thanks. Like, Thanks, Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, today, October 7, 1996, Rup launched his Fox News Channel Death Star. It’s been orbiting the news universe, destroying our galaxy.
The universe and galaxy are the same things, right? Or are they different?
Whatever, Murdoch points the thing at truth and reason, and he vaporizes it with a red laser of lies.
The Rup wanted to create a conservative-leaning news channel, to combat the 24 hours news giant CNN. To accomplish this, he went out a grabbed your average Republican operative, Roger Ailes, presumably by his genitals, to run the operation. Ailes managed the job in between sexually harassing the talent and eating twinkies in his office.
The original lineup had tv man and part-time historian Bill O’Reilly, who makes Okay History look like something written by David McCullough, followed by a show hosted by some lady who was probably harassed by Mr. Bill. They closed out the evening lineup with a comedy show featuring Sean Hannity and a puppet named Colmes.
Somehow this became a massive hit.
One of the things I loved learning about Fox News is how they put words on the screen for their audience, who may be hard of hearing, to follow along. Imagine trying to hate Bill Clinton and Bill O’Reilly is your preferred source of haterade, and ultimately you need his own closed captioning to get fired up. Did we not read in the late 1990s?
Television is a powerful medium.
You know the rest of the story. Pretty much everyone sexually assaulted everyone else, and occasionally, they were correct about wrongdoings on the left (you are welcome family members who subscribe). Everyone associated with Fox News Channel made a boatload of money.
Twenty-six years later, we are screaming at each over Thanksgiving dinner to tell Mom to turn it off.
Okay, let's go to the next round of state rankings!
30: New Jersey
Founded: December 18, 1787
3rd State
Do I know the state capital off the top of my head? Princeton (Why did Princeton jump into my mind here? Princeton? Holy moly, I’m not good at naming state capitals – it’s Trenton, which apparently is a city. It’s got traffic lights and everything)
Have I been there? Yes, at Princeton, actually. Don’t remember seeing the capital building, but it was dark.
Do I want to go back? I think I have to. So, yes.
The Good:
I think I mentioned this before, but I’m a massive fan of the television series The Sopranos. The crime-drama series was set in New Jersey and ran from 1999 until 2007, a time in my life when I went out on 368 first-and-only dates.
The story revolves around the Boss of the family, Tony Soprano, who is looking to strike the right balance in his life between his mental health and ending the lives of others in his work.
They followed this fantastic series with a terrible prequel movie called The Many Saints of Newark. But this is the good section, so I’ll save my cutting review for another time.
The Bad:
New Jersey won’t let you pump your own gas, which is a wild idea. The Garden State went full service back in 1949 over concerns that the people of New Jersey were too stupid to do so themselves. I’ll cut them a break here; we were only driving cars for thirty-some-odd years at this point.
But they have kept this rule in place. I think mostly to protect union jobs, but it’s crazy that something like this still exists. It’s a bad look for Jersey, and I feel like I’m being kind here.
The Ugly:
Do you remember Bridgegate? Back in 2013, then New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (What exactly were his parents thinking?) was involved in a scandal that saw two lanes of the George Washington bridge closed near the town of Fort Lee (Sounds like a cross-section of the Civil War going on here). This caused a traffic jam, but unlike the numerous traffic jams the people of New Jersey experience every day, this one was ugly.
The motivation behind the closure was to get back at the Democratic Mayor of Fort Lee, who didn’t endorse Christie for governor. So like school children, three of Christie’s staff emailed, texted, and left all kinds of electronic paper trails explaining what they were doing to get back at him, but closing a bridge that didn’t affect him personally. Makes sense. New Jersey logic.
To sum it up, Christie was left off the hook, but his Chief of Staff, Bridget Kelly, was found guilty of violating the civil rights of the drivers on the bridge.
What’s crazy is that this case is that it went all the way to the Supreme Court, where they unanimously struck down the guilty verdict in 2020. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the scheme wasn’t fraud because get this, Kelly “did not aim to obtain money or property.” Wild.
Why did I rank it here?
New Jersey is steeped in history. So much so that they have their own White House. Not this White House, but this White House.
Established in a time when people could pump their own gas in the state, this sub-shop creates some of the best sandwiches you can find. And I just realized they could ship one to me. How did I not know this?
I still like Atlantic City. Not that I go there too often, but I appreciate the old-school nature of it. I watched the movie Rounders recently, and the characters pop on down to AC like they are going to work. Kind of fun life.
29: Wisconsin
Founded: May 29, 1848
30th State
Do I know the state capital off the top of my head? Madison
Have I been there? Yes.
Do I want to go back? Yes.
The Good:
Wisconsin is the home of beer, cheese, and brats. That’s three of the four food groups I live on. You know who else loves cheese? Anonymous. I have a sweet tooth, and Anonymous devours cheese. I also love cheese, because I eat everything.
Wisconsin is the #1 producer of cheese in the United States. In related breakthrough news, water is wet.
France is the only other place I can think of when it comes to cheese. There are over 1,000 cheese makers in Wisconsin. As a reference, its total population is about 5 Million.
Someone do the math related to people and cheese makers.
The Bad:
All that beer Wisconsin produces causes a higher percentage of binge drinking, which leads to driving under the influence, which is never a good thing. Wisconsin leads the nation in DUI arrests. That’s really bad.
People continue to leave Wisconsin as well, presumably, full of cheese.
The Ugly:
Waukesha, Wisconsin, celebrates Christmas every year with a parade. It sounds like a very Wisconsin thing to do. It’s been a tradition for almost sixty years. I bet life in this western Milwaukee suburb was pretty dull before they rolled this parade idea out.
Unfortunately, 2021 was packed with action and not in a good way. During a parade, a deranged man drove his car into the crowd killing six people and injuring another sixty.
The driver, who shall remain nameless here, was arrested later that day and charged with almost 80 additional crimes. His trial has been moved to another town because, obviously, everyone in Waukesha knows and hates this dude. The trial should begin within the week.
The defendant has also chosen to represent himself. It’s going to be ugly for him.
Why did I rank it here?
Doesn’t Wisconsin just fit, tucked inside the twenties, right in front of the thirties and all those other more flawed states? You can easily forget about Wisconsin, but then you remember cheese and immediately smile. Not a top ten smile, or a top 20 smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Wisconsin has never produced a United States President. It did give us a Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, but that’s about it. I mean, Minnesota has given us three justices, for crying out loud!
Their baseball team has never won a World Series (Unlike Minnesota). The National Hockey League hasn’t put a team there (They did in Minnesota, TWICE!).
So Wisconsin is basically Minnesota Lite. I hope you see what I did there.
We are officially in the final quarter of 2022. Another year is about to end, but you still have time to complete those new year’s resolutions.
Speaking of which, in looking at the number of states, I still have a bunch more to rank, and the number of weeks until the end of the year, when I’d like to wrap up this year’s focus, is shrinking. So I’m going to throw in extra states now and then.
Which means we have plenty of states left on the table. Now is your chance to influence me. I promise this will be the last time I ask. After this week, my rankings are no longer up for sale.
Until Monday. Cheers!