Manhattan versus Montana

By Betsey Weltner, Guest Writer, 5-24-09

For a Montanan, to be called “wimpy” by a Manhattanite is about the same as being called “ugly” by a frog.

I was not aware that Montana had a foreign policy, much less a policy on the status of Guantanamo Bay.  But Gail Collins’ Memorial Day weekend squib in the New York Times says not only do we have a position on “Gitmo” but it’s a wimpy one. The same article notes former Veep Cheney is mental, so maybe it was intended as a dark geopolitical satire as we head into a summer that promises sunshine, trashy novels and escapist films.

Although a transplant, I have lived in the Treasure State long enough to consider Ms. Collins’ wimp barb as just plain rude – about as rude as if you were in my home state of Georgia and said something mean about my momma. (She also pointed out, rightly, that Montana has a lot of nicknames.)

Apparently Montanans’ effeminate proclivities were exposed when two members of our congressional delegation objected to someone’s vague idea of moving scary Taliban and Al Qaeda dudes from Gitmo to a jail in Hardin.

“Montanans are more easily frightened than Manhattanites,” Collins claims, because their senator, Charles Schumer, didn’t have a hissy fit when a terrorist plot was busted up in the Bronx. What’s next, a “My senator can beat up your senator” bumper sticker?

Guantanamo notwithstanding, I cannot stand by and let a sissy charge be leveled at my adopted state by a someone from the city that invented “metrosexual”. So here it is (blatently plagiarizing New Yorker David Letterman who owns a ranch in Montana). The top 10 reasons Montanans are tougher than New Yorkers:

10. New Yorkers worry about ants ruining their July 4 picnics. Montanans worry about blizzards.
9. New Yorkers fear muggers. Montanans fear 600-pound grizzly bears that are cranky and hungry.
8. New Yorkers have neighborhood crime watch programs. Last year a crack head held up a Bozeman Casino on a Friday afternoon. The construction workers who patronize the casino had him trussed in duct tape and splayed across the front of a pickup before the cops arrived.
7. New Yorkers who get married buy dresses by Vera Wang and tuxes by Armani. Montanans wear their best Carhartts.
6. New Yorkers think it’s hard to commute to work on a crowded, smelly subway. Try driving over a mountain pass before the snow plows arrive, looking for 10-foot poles placed along the road by the Highway Department so you’ll know where it is.
5. New York women panic if they can’t get a foils appointment as soon as the roots start to show. Montana women worry that their just-washed and towel-dried hair will freeze and break off as they drive to work in -20 temps.
4. New Yorkers have to wait in line for 20 minutes and spend $5 for a cup of latte. Some Montanans have to drive 50 miles each way to the closest bar and a cold Moose Drool beer, which costs less than a latte.
3. New York women are good at hand-to-hand combat during the sales at Bloomingdale’s. A Montana woman can take a trophy bull with a bow, field dress it, and carry it down the mountain in her non-designer backpack.
2. New Yorkers wear chains as a tattoo accessory. Montanans carry chains in the backs of their pickups so they can make it up the mountain after a three-foot dump of snow.
And number one (drum roll):
1. New Yorkers have to wait for hours to get into the hottest sushi bar in Chelsea. Montanans aren’t into eating bait, but we are into fish, and will drive for days through the middle of nowhere to get to that primo trout stream. And we won’t tell you where it is ‘cause then we’d have to kill you.

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