America is the land of diversity, and no where exemplifies that more than Los Angeles. Just take LAX for example. A place where the driving laws of a hundred nations of origin are flaunted and broken. And of course, the local authorities are left helpless. They don’t even know which siren to use, American or French style, but just to be safe they have decided to carry Central American style machine guns.
But the airport isn’t the only international scene in LA. There is Chinatown and Little Ethiopia. You can get authentic Mexican, Korean, and Pilipino food. You can even watch foreign films here (if you wanted to). Even the white kids of Orange County have traveled throughout all of Europe and wandered the streets of Tokyo.
The ironic thing about all of that is the fact that those same kids who can easily point out on a map where the best indoor ski slopes of Dubai are can only vaguely gesture to a broad area between Panama and Northern Canada when asked to indicate where Ohio is.
While many people would blame the smog which is itself caused by many of those kids smoking pot, I blame Ohio. I believe that Ohio and much of the Midwest have done a poor job of marketing their ethnicity. Being “ethnic” is one of the hottest trends going around Hollywood these days, and the “fly-over” just doesn’t have it, with the limited exception of the Amish. Like many of today’s most popular ethnicities the Amish dress weird, have an accent, and they are all really hard to tell apart.
As an Ohio-an I think that this is a model, we all can adopt. Like many of the traditionally ethnic spots, such as Italy, Ethiopia, and Disneyworld, we need to adopt certain distinctives that will separate us from just being a pudgier, less irrationally dressed people from a state that isn’t on the coast.
But how can we as Midwesterners become more ethnic? Good question. And to answer that, we need to once again look at what is Politically Correct. Or specifically what is currently not Politically Correct. If you were to think of your current token ethnic friend, and think about those topics and differences that you would not be allowed to mention, those are what we need to adopt.
For instance, we need accents. Sure it might make us more unintelligible, but it would make an Indianan restaurant way more popular instead of just a disappointment for the people who realized that they misread the sign and aren’t going to get to eat spicy chickpeas with their bare hands.
Also we should play up our appearance more. If other groups can embrace their skin color then so can we. Stop being so ashamed of being pasty and pudgy. We need to make see-through skin our trademark. I vote that “cracker” should be a term that we use to refer to ourselves regularly but get offended when another ethnicity uses it.
And of course, we can’t be truly ethnic without our own food. We are certainly a meat and potatoes people. But we can’t really claim steak since Texas kind of claimed that one. No, what Lil’ Midwest (what I’m calling Midwest town coming soon to a TBD large coastal city) will be featuring are “Home Cooked Meals.” I don’t mean microwaveable meals or PF Chang’s take-out, like most Californian home cooked meals. I mean truly ethnic Midwest, like meatloaf and creamed corn.
Now, this may sound bland and boring to the unimaginative, but themes are almost as hot as ethnicities right now, and we can just run with this whole Home Cooked Meal thing. For instance, instead of a Melting Pot style fondue restaurant we could have a Minnesota style crock pot style restaurant. But since crock pot meals take hours to cook, we could adopt the whole “you’ll eat what is put on the table,” dogma that is preached throughout the red states. Not only do you not get a choice as to what you eat, but you’ll have to set your own table as well. And don’t even think about asking for the check until you’ve cleaned up your plate. And on Thursdays you get left-overs, some might say to reduce the carbon footprint, others would say to clean out the fridge
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Hopefully, if my plan works, Ohio will soon be recognized and admired for driving American made vehicles and pouring loads of salt all over our food and our roads, and not just being confused with the state where all the potatoes come from. Possibly we could even become a big popular tourist destination like many other ethnic places. But even if it doesn’t become cool to anyone else, it will always be cool to me. Freezing actually. That’s why I moved to California. It’s like 20 below in April there. Lame
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