Saturday, December 31, 2005

Life in the DMZ

Living in NW Indiana can be a lot like living in a DMZ. You're not really part of any particular country, or in our case, state. There were a couple of stories in the news this week that illustrate this point.

On Wednesday, Mitch Davis, the Governor of Indiana, which is technically the state we live in, held a statewide town hall meeting which was "broadcast to every corner of the state." Care to guess which corner was left out? That's right! No TV or radio station in NWI was even given the opportunity to broadcast the meeting. The closest stations to us that had it were in South Bend. We didn't even know about it up here until after the fact. WISH-TV in Indianapolis, which was in charge of the broadcast, said that they offered it to the Chicago stations because we are considered part of that TV market, but obviously, they weren't interested. We do have a local PBS station in Merrillville, but it was not offered the broadcast.

On Thursday, the Chicago Bears announced that playoff tickets would only be available to residents of Illinois. Here in NWI, we're really suburban Chicago. I live closer to the city now than I did when I lived in Deerfield. However, if you want Bears playoff tickets, you're better off living in East St. Louis (293 miles from Soldier Field) than in East Chicago (23 miles from Soldier Field).

Lake and Porter counties could secede from Indiana and nobody would notice. We'd probably be better off except that our governments, especially in Lake County, are comically corrupt and we need the help of the state to keep these guys in line.

I hope everybody has a Happy New Year!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i hear you, jerry!! i grew up in Munster and my parents currently live in Dyer. When people ask me where I grew up, I say 'Chicago area.' Of course, they automatically assume that I lived in Illinois. I have to expand my explanation, saying that I actually lived in Indiana, less than a mile away from the IL-IN border. I almost always have to add this qualifier.

As for the Bears' playoff ticket policy, it makes no sense. I'll leave it at that.