REALLY IMPORTANT POLL

[brigdh]

rm and I have been having this argument discussion for years, and I need to ask your opinion. Also, I'm totally not going to sway your opinion by telling you that Ohio is in the East Coast timezone.

[Poll #1733722]

ETA: I mean culturally, not geographically (though obviously the two are linked).

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

You know, it occurs to me that a lot of the disagreement and confusion around the question comes down to the celebrated American lack of knowledge of geography? There's a way in which it doesn't feel like an East Coast state, intuitively, because it's far away from the Northeast megalopolis that everyone thinks of as the "East Coast," and clearly has nothing to do with the Southern seaboard that's the other thing people might think of. And it's not the mythic American West, of either the left coast or the Western, and it's not the old Confederacy.

So, what's left? The Midwest, of course! All those states somewhere in the middle of the country! Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, who knows, they're all out there somewhere west of here, right?

Unless you're a fourth-grader or otherwise a person who tends to look at maps, of course. In which case you will see that Ohio is actually right in the middle of the old Northeast industrial heartland, not far from the East Coast at all.