L.A.-bashing gettin' really old...

This afternoon I attended the Wednesday Morning Club at the Four Seasons, where Laura Ingraham was the featured speaker. Ingraham was on her "Power to the People" tour, driving a bus emblazoned with the same slogan while pitching and signing her current book of the same name.

Now, let me start by noting that I am far more libertarian than Ingraham (I've been on her show before), so I wasn't apt to agree with some of her presentation in the first place. I don't believe that some folks not being modest spells the end of it all, and I have never been able to find the distinction between "family values" and regular ol' values -- which exist in people who come from good families and screwed-up families alike. And though Ingraham is a very talented public speaker, she wasted no time launching into the tired conservative refrain that goes something like this: L.A. has no values. The middle of the U.S. is America. Middle America gets the heebie-jeebies just thinking about L.A. Angelenos (and, as she specifically included, folks from Santa Barbara on south) live in a "bubble" mentality whereby we just cruise down Sunset in convertibles and thus can't top the good ol' American values of the Heartland.

I've been to about half the states in this union, and lived in Texas and Colorado. I once road-tripped it to South Dakota (long story) and was surprised to not find the welcoming hospitality so often associated with the Midwest -- rather, I encountered a clique mentality hesitant to welcome outsiders, and a very homogeneous population. I like our diversity, and, in addition, I like diversity of thought. In the last election, L.A. County went for Kerry, and the surrounding counties went for Bush. We really aren't that easy to define, and are beyond sweeping generalizations. Frankly, L.A. is not the end of humanity as we know it.

But is it just the celebs in La-La Land perpetuating this reputation to Middle America (those same Middle Americans who can't wait to come spend their tourist dollars here and buy maps to the stars' homes), or is it conservative talk-show hosts who fail to make the distinction to their Heartland audiences that L.A. is composed of a lot more than Lindsay Lohan and Barbra Streisand?