Sayeth The Progressives In Greensboro, North Carolina: "No Offense To Our Friends To The North And South, But We Are Stuck With Rockingham And Randolph (Counties)"

As a blogger in the Greensboro/Piedmont-Triad area, living (but not working) in Asheboro, I've always been made to feel like a bastard step-child by Blogsboro's bluer, more enlightened "big guns".  Edward-Cone-of-the-Cones, John-Robinson-of-the-N&R, Sue Polinsky-of-Converge-South, Roch Smith-Jr.-of-GSO-We-101, etc. are actually not nearly as progressive as they professed to be when I originally took the citizen journalism bait.

No.  From the very beginning, as a red-county hick-doctor-done-way-beyond-wrong (because, in the spirit of "cooperation", the carpet-baggers running my hometown "band-aid station" had to cover-up the mistake of a Cone-owned neonatology wannabe), I'm supposed to take my problems with the beyond-corrupt North Carolina justice system, shut up, get over it, and stay well south of their high-minded metro. 

Do-gooding only extends to the Greensboro city limts (well, unless you count the water they might someday get from the Randleman Dam - over Mike Baron's dead body).

Nothing could have portrayed the self-interested snottiness and tunnel-visioned hypocrisy of Asheboro's "neighbors" 30 miles north than this Sunday morning story, front-page-above-the-online-fold at the Greensboro News & Record.

A good friend of mine (born and raised in Asheboro, but no longer of it) actually called me this morning, yuck-yucking over the article's title, "Decade was Hard Across Metro Area".

"DUH-HUH", he said.  "Ya think?  What WILL the newshounds at the N&R report next?"

On hospital rounds at the time, I had not read the article yet, but he directed me to pay special attention to an exquisite gem from its mid-section:

Some local leaders blame the area’s poor showing, at least in part, on a redrawing of the nation’s metro areas early in the decade.

At that time, Guilford found itself separated from Forsyth County and joined with Rockingham and Randolph, two counties that have seen their unemployment rates soar past 15 percent and 12 percent respectively during the recession.

“Right now, we are half an apple,” said Keith Debbage, a professor of urban geography at UNCG.

Here's the kicker, folks:

“No offense to our friends to the north and south, but we are stuck with Rockingham and Randolph.”

"You've got to blog that", my friend said.

Not only have I blogged it, I dropped a comment at the N&R - offering the perspective of a bastard blogging stepchild from Randolph County (whose Mother went to college and grad-school at UNC-G . . . whose grandparents lived and died in Greensboro . . . whose Father was born and raised in Greensboro . . . who herself was born at Cone Hospital - and attended both nursery school and college at UNC-G . . . and who has spent a whole PILE of money over the years on the shopping trips to - and dinners in - Greensboro):

Chuckle, don't think that the Rockingham and Randolph residents who read this rag (at least online) - and who are in deeper holes - and who come to "the metro" to shop and work and go-to-school and do business - didn't catch that - and don't appreciate all the smug ugly underneath that kind of sentiment . . .

. . . Being "smart" and "hard-working" doesn't get rewarded in the same way that it used to be. That too is part of our overall decline.

My point is this.  I may not have a PhD in anything important (me just being a "dime-a-dozen MD and all), but from bad medicine to bad justice to economic meltdowns, we're all in this together.  The sooner the smug, know-it-all, snot-wads in Greensboro (at the newspapers and the universities and the cooperating hospitals that do not hesitate to ask for our patronage) wake up and realize that, the better off we all will be.

The people and areas that you sneer and spit at can take "half-an-apple" and make applesauce.  What can YOU do with it?

In short, Professor (and Editors of the N&R), OFFENSE TAKEN.