A few weeks ago when New York voted down same-sex marriages I read several comments across blogs stating that the unfortunate turn of events was “because of Upstate”. One person lamented that “it’s really nothing more than an Alabama with snow up there”, obviously typing from their cushy office chair, cushioned from the rumble of the subway moving folks several dozen floors belows them as they sipped on their mocha-cocha-la-la-latte vente.
That comment really bugged me. And it’s still bugging me.
Now I have never been to Alabama but I believe the gross generalisation the commentor was striving for was that we are all stuck in “Deliverance” up here in Upstate New York. Apparently we are wearing straw hats as we drive around in our pickup trucks with several shotguns in the window and we are longing for the days of the commie blacklisting. Oh, and we have a lot of snow too.
One of the beautiful things about the U.S. is our diversity and while we do have people that meet this description, we also have folks up here just as cultured, prim and proper (and snotty) as the some folks downstate portray themselves to be.
Every few years someone in government tries to drum up support of splitting the City of New York and Long Island away from the rest of the state. Upstaters screech that the city wouldn’t be sucking us dry with outrageous taxes nor taking away our liberties with all of the legislation that doesn’t really apply up here and downstaters claim that they won’t have to pump all of their tax money into our roads and prisons and welfare recipients.
Now I’m going to reserve comment right now as to whether I think the five boroughs and Long Island should somehow separate from the rest of the state (though if they did, I think they should take everything below I-84 with them), but I’m curious as to what my fellow Empire Staters think.
Should New York split into two states?
Actually, most of the DEMOCRATIC Senators who failed to vote in favor of marriage were almost all from QUEENS, which is a borough of NYC the last time I checked. There are some Manhattanites who might consider Queens upstate, but they’d be wrong. There might have been a few upstate Republican Senators who might have crossed over and voted yes, if the Democratic majority could have produced a closer vote. When they saw that so many Democrats were not voting yes, they declined to stick their necks out. Upstate Republicans considering votes in favor of marriage must have been wary of being Scozzafava’d by the NY Conservative Party and their own GOP. This vote was held without advance knowledge of the outcome, unlike all other Albany votes, to flush out the opponents from behind their promises of “maybe”. Now we know who to target in the next legislative elections, and I hope that the next time this bill comes up in the Senate it will pass easily. Secondly, if you want to make upstate poorer than it already is, cut it off from the tax revenues produced by Wall Street. The reality is, my fellow upstate rednecks, that we depend on NYC much more than we realize for our standard of living. They could do just fine without us, but the reverse is not so true. I’m in Rochester, BTW.