Regional Inferiority Complex Hits Record Level

A few years ago, my wife and I were listening to a broadcast of This American Life on WDUQ. I can't remember the topic of the program that day, but I do remember a very funny interview with a young Canadian man. He pointed out that Canadians generally suffer from a sort of national inferiority complex; and they feel the need to compensate for these feelings by pointing out Canadian connections whenever the opportunity presents itself. He gave a number of examples, all of which were rather funny. For instance, he said that the Space Shuttle is never referred to as just the "Space Shuttle" in Canadian news broadcasts, but is instead invariably introduced as "the American Space Shuttle with its Canadian-built robot arm". Or how, if you happen to mention to a Canadian that you heard an old song by the band Rush (one of my all time favorites) on the radio, you will immediately get interrupted by them telling you, "You know, they're Canadian".

What stuck us as so funny about this story was that, as relative newbies to the Pittsburgh region, we often saw exactly the same sort of behavior around here. Every single story that cropped up in the news was immediately spun to find a local angle -- any kind of a local angle -- to throw in. Christina Aguilera used to live in Wexford. Various cast members of various reality shows used to live in various western Pennsylvania locales. Some third-world dictator would get blown up in his car, and the local headline would trumpet the fact that two of the four lug nuts used to secure the vehicle's right rear tire were machined in West Mifflin.

But this time they've gone too far. I checked the Tribune-Review website last night, and this is what I found splashed up on the main page:

Chances are that you have, by now, seen something in the news about this astronaut kidnapping story. One of NASA's astronauts got wrapped up in some kind of romantic relationship with another astronaut, got jealous of another woman whom she saw as a rival for her beau's affections, and ended up in a physical confrontation with this adversary. The situation got pretty disturbing, the police were called, the attacker was arrested, and some dangerous objects were found nearby. Of course, these things happen hundreds of times a day, and the media never pays the slightest attention. But since this was one of our astronauts, and because there are some frankly funny elements to the story -- our astronaut wore diapers while driving to the confrontation, so that she wouldn't have to stop to use the restroom -- it gets a little bit of the media spotlight.

And how does the Tribune-Review spin the story? With the news that the victim in this attack -- not the astronaut, mind you -- used to live in Monaca. Not Pittsburgh, but Monaca. And she hasn't even lived there since she graduated from high school 12 years ago.

I don't know about you, but this seems like a real stretch to me. Sure, people like to have a local angle on national stories, but come on! This has to be a new high water mark, especially when you read the accompanying article and see that the Trib actually interviewed this poor woman's classmates and teachers.

Really folks, western Pennsylvania is a pretty decent place. We do some good things around these parts. We don't need to demonstrate our ability to produce love-triangle assault victims to prove it to the rest of the nation.