Sorry Robin, but as a New Yorker (and an ex-Pennsylvanian,) currently living in Boston, the ridiculous attempt at cultural theory which is all the red-state/blue-state idiocy aside (another neologism for which we can thank David Brooks - ugh), i can honestly say that New York is pretty cognitively distant from New England. NYC and Boston feel like they're 1000 miles away from each other.



And Josh, Matt Traldi's wry comments strike me as being uncomfortably close to a perverse and desperate sort of slumming. E.g., "i am of the people because i live in the same state as people who mandate the teaching of intelligent design in high schools," or somesuch. With all due respect to Mr. Traldi, this doesn't seem at all useful. Plus, even though i haven't livedin PA since i was eight and a half, i can assure you that there are plenty of reactionaries in New York (which I just argued, isn't New England, so maybe i'm being overly defensive here. But then even the categorization of "New England" seems a bit suspect to me. I mean, Greenwich and Bridgeport are disparate enough without trying to lump them in with Montpelier.