The Glendale Star
10
July 22, 2021
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Who cares about polls? The Valley has our hearts BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Glendale Star Columnist
With all due respect to the fine journalists who toil for U.S. News and World Report, their magazine’s annual list of “Best Places to Live” once again ranks as one of the most hilarious acts of journalism committed to print this year. Want to yuk it up? Listen to this Top Five of America’s Best Hometowns: Ranked fifth, there’s Austin, Texas, “laidback to the point that if you’re dressing up, it must be a life event.” Fourth, Fayetteville, Arkansas, where – and I quote – “people wave and smile at each other in the street, and community events are well-attended.” Third, we have Huntsville, Alabama, which boasts “the most educated population in the state.” The state of Alabama. Need I say more? No. 2 goes to Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, whose selling points include “gathering over craft beers in
one of the region’s many microbreweries” and “strangers ... quick to provide a friendly conversation when standing in line at the supermarket.” I prefer Budweiser and silently bagging my groceries to get the hell out of Bashas’ as fast as possible. The big winner for 2021: Boulder, Colorado, named America’s Best Place to Live for the second consecutive year. I’ve been to Boulder. Nice place – if you like John Denver songs, chocolate chip edibles and hemp underwear. As U.S. News puts it, Boulder “has opportunities from forest bathing and free meditation sessions to an abundance of marijuana dispensaries, spas and alternative health care studios. The full spectrum of yoga disciplines is represented here, as well as … ‘Animal Flow’ ground-based movement classes.” Sounds like a pulled hamstring waiting to happen. Plus, the description alone gives you the munchies – and zero desire to fire up the moving van.
The Phoenix metro area ranked 40th this year, up 13 spots from 2020 and sandwiched between Houston and Knoxville. We scored high for having “a thriving job market, a relatively low cost of living and plenty of ways to enjoy the nice weather.” No mention of chatty strangers in the grocery store, a thriving weed scene or ample chances to do goat yoga. It could be worse. Tucson ranked 81st. Dead last? San Juan, Puerto Rico. My problem with this list is my problem with all such lists: They attempt to scientifically rank something that is less science and more emotion. U.S. News – whose brand depends entirely on ranking things like cities and colleges – has created a formula by polling 3,600 internet users, then weighting each area’s job market, housing affordability, quality of life, desirability and how many people move in and out annually. After that, there’s a whole lot of mumbo jumbo about standard deviation and something called a Z-Score.
This seems as good a scientific method as any to rank places, but it still misses what really motivates humans to live where we live: The job that beckons us or the chance to live near those we love. I’m sure my story is typical and illustrative. I moved to the Valley 26 years ago for work, then stayed because I laid down roots. There are people I love here, a business I built, and a million little things that lift my spirit: the crunch of my hiking shoes on Piestewa Peak, the sound of Al McCoy’s voice calling a Phoenix Suns basketball game, the breakfast quesadilla at Bit-zee Mama’s in Glendale and the countless purples and oranges that drip down the sky during each night’s sunset. So what if Boulder scores a 7.6 because it has “Tube to Work Day” and “dirtbag climbers (who) live in a van?” The Valley may only score a 6.8, but the place has our hearts.
the Oval Office. Rather than foster the perception that he was a bold “man of action,” as so many of his successors would encourage of themselves once ego met ambition at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Eisenhower employed a style that encouraged an incurious or even an indulgent reaction, considering that he was the first septuagenarian to serve as president. His press secretary, James C. Hagerty, recalled an anecdote that typified Ike’s approach. When considering a challenging question, he might face
concerning a controversial topic at a press conference, Eisenhower told his staffer: “Don’t worry, Jim; if that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them.” While Eisenhower exploited imprecision as part of his personal image, other leaders from the other side of the aisle have employed it to achieve policy goals. Lyndon Johnson dramatically expanded the federal role in health care by advocating and signing into law both the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Three decades after those programs were established, historian-turned-House Speaker Newt Gingrich theorized that by sowing deliberate
seeds of confusion over Medicare and Medicaid, distinctions between the two would be forgotten and therefore any stigma about government-run health care would be minimized in the public consciousness, thus aiding the left in advocating a complete federal takeover of healthcare. Fast-forward to the here and now. Joe Biden leads a Democratic Party increasingly conflicted about truly democratic elections. Despite the parroting of the “voter suppression” canard by a reliably partisan Washington Press Corps, this is one instance where the American
David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com.
Democrats conflicted on democratic elections BY J.D. HAYWORTH
Glendale Star Columnist
The America of the 1950’s seems quaint by today’s standards. Our memories of that era match the monochrome images that danced across early television screens from coast to coast, we see Dwight David Eisenhower as a genial grandfather and golf enthusiast instead of the decisive leader and hardened warrior. In his 1982 book “The Hidden-Hand Presidency,” political scientist and historian Fred I. Greenstein revised the thinking about Ike and his two terms in
SEE HAYWORTH PAGE 11
