[quote=AN][quote=eavesdropper]Excuse me?? Dallas AND Houston BOTH made the list?? Red-state Texas? Super-Christianite Texas? Pro-marriage Texas? Anti-premarital sex Texas? Mega-family-values-Texas has TWO cities in the top ten? [/quote]
Seriously? This from the lady who constantly rail against the American public for being too polarized and not doing their proper research? I’m sure you did your research and just can’t help but be partisan. FYI both Harris County and Dallas County voted for Obama in 2008. Obama actually beat McCain 57.5% to 41.9% in Dallas.[/quote]
Okay, AN, you reeeallly need to get over your absurd preoccupation with statements I’m making in my posts. You’re starting to remind me of the Frank Burns character in M*A*S*H, and that’s not a good thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve interpreted your post as saying that (1) I’m engaging in polarizing activity by bringing attention to Texas’s presence on the list, (2) that I didn’t do my proper research, and (3) that the research I didn’t do was wrong, and that the fact that Obama beat McCain in the 2008 elections in both Dallas and Harris counties PROVES that these two areas are actually liberal strongholds in Texas, thereby explaining their places on the list.
AN, I didn’t bring politics into my post at all. Everything that I DID mention has been well-established, many times over, in all forms of media, by both outside observers and Texas residents themselves. And these are sociological/cultural phenomena. Over the past few years, I have read hundreds of blog entries, message board posts, letters to editors, and interviews, in which residents of Texas attest to their high levels of morality, their true American family values, their religious fervor, and their special place in God’s radar. When their governor decide to rent a massive stadium in which attendees could get their Jesus on, just in case the message that Texas is the most Christiany place on the planet hadn’t reached everyone living on it, that just served to seal the deal.
But YOU have brought politics into this by your “evidence” re: the 2008 election results in Houston and Dallas. Are we expected to believe that because Obama beat McCain by 15 percentage points in Dallas County and 1.5 in Harris County, that Houston and Dallas are chock full of Democrats, and
— Democrats = liberals
— Liberals = godless sinners
therefore,
–Houston and Dallas are full of sinners, which is why they had a place on the 10 most promiscuous cities list?
Actually, thinking that I was just leaving a tongue-in-cheek response to a humorous post from flu, I did NO research, proper or otherwise, prior to my post on Saturday.
However, I keep abreast of Texas political trends and elections, despite the fact that I am not currently a resident of that fine state. The Harris and Dallas county results of the race between the 2008 Presidential race contenders are true aberrations, AN. The only other year in the past sixty that a Democrat won the Presidency in Harris and Dallas counties was 1964 (why don’t you Google it to determine why that happened?).
The fact remains that Texas, including Harris and Dallas counties, is overwhelmingly (and, in all likelihood, permanently) Republican in its voter demographics. While Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate did slightly better than the Republican winners of the 2008 election, the Republicans maintained a significant lead in U.S. House, and Texas state senate and house seats in both Harris and Dallas counties in 2008. What’s more, these numbers increased in the 2010 midterms.
So, AN, to answer your question: Yes, SERIOUSLY, I find it amusing, and somewhat remarkable that not just one, but TWO Texas cities have found their way onto this list, given the PR job that both the people and the governor of Texas have given themselves over the past several years. Because I said something that wasn’t terribly complimentary to Texas (I pretty much called the Ultra-Christianites hypocrites) doesn’t mean that I am guilty of partisanship. Just like when the New York Times or NPR or CNN reports the criminal acts of a conservative congressman, that doesn’t invariably mean that they have a liberal bias.
In the meantime, stop hassling me with your obsessive nitpicking of my posts, and your absurd misinterpretation of their content. Once again, you’ve left yourself vulnerable to criticism, not because of an opinion or position you adopt, but because of your inability to “hear” what others are saying, and your lack of preparation prior to entering public discourse.
