New York-based totebag carrying liberals.

look. me.

HI!

Point being that NPR reporting can fall into this sort of cultural condescension, wittingly or not. And being it was the Red Sox, the NEW YORK-BASED part is the important thing here.

I would in fact argue that Boston is the only place in which that kind of anthropological condescension can be fairly performed, since Boston reveres its own sensibility as traditional, obscure, superstitious, somewhat strange.

I can say the same thing about Tulsa, only swap the whaling for oil, the New York rivalry with Oklahoma City, and Red Sox traditions with Sooner traditions. And steep in a mixture of Charismatic, Evangelical, and Fundamentalist Christianity, then top it with some televangelists.

Boston thinks it's the Hub, but Tulsa has this moral superiority about itself. And then there's the Center of the Universe here in Seattle....

The only joke of the piece was that Orlean didn't seem to get how much Boston's quaintness is intentional.

Or maybe she did and just had the tongue too firmly in cheek.

I almost feel like writing the ombudsman about it.

combines baseball talk with chav talk by pointing at Mr. Carroll's Yankees cap.

I can say the same thing about Tulsa

Except that Tulsa has no baseball team. All but the most psychotic ordinary citizens understand that Boston is a city of 600,000, compared to New York's eleventy million residents. It is only in baseball that Boston transforms into a chest-forward, neck-waggling, finger-pointing Jerry Springer guest.

female chavs pull their hair tightly back in buns or ponytails, a style known as a "council house facelift,"

This makes me laugh. I'm not saying that it's nice to call people names, but still.

It is only in baseball that Boston transforms into a chest-forward, neck-waggling, finger-pointing Jerry Springer guest.

Also, race relations. In reputation, anyway.

Vicky, on the brilliant show Little Britain, is a chav, velour track suit and all.

I'm not saying that it's nice to call people names.

WHAT!?!?!

Sometimes, I'm.... not nice.

Hey, are we B&T now? Should I be wearing tighter clothes?

Except that Tulsa has no baseball team.

Aaah, but they have college football. Not quite on the "You were on the 40-man roster for the 2004 Red Sox? You're getting SOOO lucky tonight" level of insanity, but it's really, really bad.

There's an old saying that when someone moves to Oklahoma, before they pick a house or a doctor, they must pick between OU and OSU. And the easiest way to get kicked out of a family is to plan your wedding for OU-Texas weekend.

Also, race relations. In reputation, anyway.

See, also an area in which Boston and Tulsa are analogues. Boston had the busing riots of the 70s. Tulsa had the Greenwood Riot of 1921. Both are never mentioned in conversation, polite or otherwise.

Tulsa: Boston's long lost twin brother, countrified.

B&T is more than living in an outer borough. It's a whole lifestyle that can include, lawn ornaments, gold chains, really tight t-shirts, neon on your car, heading to the middle village on a wekkend night, thick accents, non-gay men shaving and/or waxing all or most of their torso, being really loud all the time.