>Thanks for forwarding me Joseph Noonan's comments. His geographical
>corrections are duly noted, although I must say that the pride he takes in
>pointing them out strikes me as more than a bit parochial. If he had written
>an article that tried to wrestle with the nature of New York politics in a
>serious way, it wouldn't bother me terribly if he mixed up the location of
>Bloomingdale's or Zabar's.
>
>But his comment that "Texas really is just the US on steroids, not a special
>case," is more bothersome. It strikes me, frankly, as a very Texas
>sentiment, both in its humor and skepticism and its anti-intellectualism. Aw
>shucks, he seems to be saying, Lazare is making a big deal about what is at
>bottom a simple quantitative relationship. But Texas constantly brags about
>its special character -- its history, its brief period of independence, its
>rugged individualism and wide open spaces, etc., etc. My article was simply
>an effort to show how this special identity was developed and nurtured over a
>span of some 125 years and to point out the horrors it's given rise to. I
>also tried to show how Texas interacts with the larger idea of America.
>Rather than being simple and quantitative, the relation between the two --
>and, by extention, the relationship between Texas, America, and the world, is
>a good deal more complex, and hence richer, than Noonan seems to realize.
Doug