Wilonsky just knows how to push my Yankee carpetbagger buttons. He keeps calling to jab me about the charges that Dallas mayoral candidates Ron Natinsky and Mike Rawlings are trading today, each one accusing the other of wanting to make Dallas like Chicago or Detroit.
Being a native of that end of the map, it does grate.
In a broadcast email today Natinsky accused Rawlings of being pro-union because he got an endorsement from a couple national unions. "Apparently Mr. Rawlings wants to turn Dallas into a union town like Chicago or Detroit," Natinsky's email says.
Rawlings came right back and pointed out that former mayor Tom Leppert got some of thee same endorsements, "and I don't think Tom Leppert wanted to turn Dallas in to Chicago or Detroit."
So here I go.
How awful would it be if Dallas had to be like that crumby old Chicago, home to the University of Chicago, Northwestern, University of Illinois, Loyola, DePaul, Roosevelt University, Robert Morris College, Columbia College -- the list goes on.
Or if we got stuck with that lousy old Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recently listed best in the nation by Gramophone, and fifth best in the world. I am looking at Gramophone's list of the world's top 20 orchestras. I see Cleveland, Boston, New York, San Francisco.
Hmmm. Dallas doesn't seem to be on that list.
And then Chicago, that crappy old union town, is stuck with all that other junk we're so glad we don't have here, like the Lyric Opera, Joffrey Ballet, Chicago Festival Ballet, Second City, I.O.
Yeah. We're way of them.
And Detroit sucks. Aren't we glad Dallas isn't surrounded by the Great Lakes and the greatest amount of publicly owned forest east of the Mississippi? Maybe that's why 20 million people visit Michigan's state parks every year, versus 7.1 million for Texas parks. That, and chiggers.
They don't have The Standing Wave.
You know what? Cool towns never brag about being better than other towns. They just are.
