Most of Virginia Now Fake
Nancy Pfotenhauer, speaking on behalf of John McCain, contrasts Northern Virginia with “real Virginia” and then sticks to her guns about NoVa’s fakeness on followup:
Of course it’s true that there’s a contrast between those portions of Virginia that are part of Metro DC and the rest of the state and probably correct to say that the rest of Virginia is “more Southern in nature.” But still, lots of folks live in Northern Virginia. They’re perfectly real people. And they live in real places. And progressive candidates with their base in NoVa won the governor’s mansion in 2001 and 2005 and the Senate election in 2006, are poised to win the state’s other Senate seat in 2008 and currently are winning in the presidential sweepstakes. It all seems real enough to me.
65 Responses to “Most of Virginia Now Fake”
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October 18th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
The First Dude thinks Obama and Charlie Manson have something in common…
From Ballon Juice
First Dude holding a sign that says “Charles Manson was a community organizer.”
October 18th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Not to mention that the biggest city in the state is Virginia Beach, part of the Hampton Roads community– host of the largest naval base in the world. Between the beach tourist town and the non-native residents, it’s not exactly “Southern” (though, it certainly can be).
Nevertheless, creating this dichotomy between Virginia and REAL Virginia is ridiculous. It’s an incredibly diverse state, which is exactly the reason it might be voting Blue for the first time in a few decades.
Nancy Pfotenhauer did McCain no favors with the Independents in Virginia.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
she means the places that still lament the loss of slavery. that’s the real virginia. who is that MSNBC news reader. he’s pretty with a brain. likes.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I lived in Real Virginia from 1987–1990 and most of my family still lives in Real Virginia. Now I live in Fake USA, Washington, DC.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Correction, First Dude is in front of the sign, not holding it. More people for McCain to be proud of.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Incredibly diverse expect in the sense that every population center in the state is literally there because of government – remove DC, the military bases, the state capital and state universities and what do you have left? Maybe 100,000 “real Virginians” – half of whom grow government subsidized tobbacco.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I wish I could find the picture, but there is a playground along the Four Mile Run/WO and D Trail in Glen Carlyn Park, just south of Route 50 in Arlington. One of the pieces of kiddie play equipment is a little red airplane, with a Soviet-style star on it that looks a lot like an old WWII era Soviet U-2 biplane.
Proof that Arlington County engages in Stalinist indoctrination techniques on their children.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Isn’t it just a reflection of their broader electoral strategy, though? There are certain real, small-town dwelling, meat-eating, gun-loving, NASCAR-watching, Chevy-driving Virginians/Americans/people, and then there’s those elitist, latte-sipping, limp-wristed, big-city Ivy League Audi owners who hate family, America, and God (not necessarily in that order).
October 18th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
The expressions “real Virginia” and “not really Virginia” have been around for years and years. I remember listening to Garrison Keillor doing a show from Wolf Trap Farm Park, and introducing the duo Robin and Linda Williams, who are from Roanoke, by saying, “It’s nice to welcome you to a stage in your home state,” to which Robin replied, “well, northern Virginia isn’t really Virginia.” There was a moment’s silence, and then the boos started to roll.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Don’t forget….
“Welcome to America, Mr. Macaca. And welcome to the real world of Virginia.”
October 18th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Didn’t John McCain’s brother insult NoVA a week or so ago calling it pinko country?
October 18th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
In the McCain camp’s estimation, Richmond, capital of the Confederacy and a majority African-American city probably doesn’t count as ‘real Virginia’ either. Nor is urban Atlanta ‘real Georgia’.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I like the fact that the CNN commentator gave her a chance to retract that comment and she couldn’t figure a way out.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
In Southside VA where I grew up NOVA was indeed considered to be a different state. And it basically is Yankee territory. On the one hand, NOVA pretty much drives the economy. (To be generous to Pfotenhauer, I’m leaving out Southeastern VA, where Obama will do quite well.) On the other hand, there was always a sense that those of us in the southern part got the shaft in the legislature.
It’s fundamentally the same as the upstate/downstate New York divide (as described accurately by Senator “Honest Graft” Plunkitt in 1905) and most states seem to have a similar division. But it takes on a special resentment in VA, where it geographically represents the receding border of the Old Confederacy. So we have a condensed version of the same Southland grievance culture that we’ve been living with for 150 years, and that was nationalized in the 1960s.
I did enjoy Pfotenhauer’s list of places McCain is doing well in. But she forgot about Poland.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I can see what she means. I mean, suppose Mississippi all of a sudden had this bustling, urbane metropolitan area, a lot of Mississippians would say that that’s not real Mississippi. But that said, a lot of this “arugula middle class”/”real middle class” (c/o Doug Holtz-Eakin), “pro-American parts of the country”/not pro-American parts of the country(?), northern Virginia/real Virginia rhetoric is pretty disturbing.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I presume Ms. Pfotenhauer will now be telling us where the dividing line between Fake Virginia and Real Virginia is? Cannot be the Beltway – parts of Fairfax and Springfield are far too commie to be Real Virginia. The Rappahannock is probably too far south – I would assume Real Virginia wants Quantico. Inquiring minds want to know.
Also, can Fake Virginia have Richmond and Charlottesville? We’ll treat them like West Berlin, airlifts and everything.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Growing up in Northern Virginia, every year or so the Journal newspapers (formerly of the Gannet empire, now I believe associated with the DC Examiner) would run an editorial advocating secession of NoVa from the rest of Va into a new state of “Potomac”. (sometimes merged with DC & MD suburbs, sometimes not)
They were only half-kidding.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I like her rationale for delegitimizing Northern Virginia: it’s full of Democrats who moved out from DC. Is there a school somewhere that lets you major specifically in being a charmless nitwit spokesperson? Where did McCain find her?
October 18th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
It’s fundamentally the same as the upstate/downstate New York divide
Point taken, and we remember Tim Russert’s Buffalo triumphalism, though upstate New Yorkers who disparage Manhattan don’t really get away with calling Utica ‘the real New York’.
I liked the opening sequence in this New Statesman piece which talked about the original urban-rural debate between Hamilton and Jefferson: “When [Americans] get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” That’s to say, Jefferson was arguing the same toss, albeit in a slightly more sophisticated way, so it’s fitting that people are invoking Virginia today.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Is there a school somewhere that lets you major specifically in being a charmless nitwit spokesperson? Where did McCain find her?
She’s omnipresent because Carly Fiorina became an embarrassment on the TV. No, really.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Pfotenhauer did let us know in no uncertain terms she lives in tony Oakton, VA. It’s an upscale and exclusive part of Fairfax County full of lawyers and such living in their McMansions on large lots. She’s the type you see in these here parts driving around in their Mercedes or Lexuses, and shopping at Tysons Corner. You wouldn’t catch her dead shopping at the nearby Target or heavens forbid, Wal-Mart, in the Real Virginia. So if Fake Virginia does indeed secede, we’d still be stuck with Pfotenhauer and her ilk. Maybe I need to move to Fake Virginia.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Pfreakkin Pffuffernutter doesn’t know jack about real Pvirginia. No way a Big Mac could slide through that neck.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Where is she from, anyway? Is she a Fake Virginian, too, since she totes a master’s degree from Mason and has been a beltway area lobbyist and think tanker for eleventy billion years? Easy money she lives in Arlington County.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
OK, so the real Virginia is the one that plunged our country into a civil war that killed 300 thousand people, to defend slavery; the fake Virginia is the one that’s economically and attitudinally tied to our national government.
This country should be euthanized.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Angry Sam – see my #21 above. She’s from Oakton, in Fairfax County. She’s definitely a Fake Virginian.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I get so tired of this crap. Fake Virginia is the state’s economic engine, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population, more diverse and better off than the rest of the state by almost any objective measure. Virginia is more educated and economically healthy than the country as a whole, but without fake Virginia the state would resemble South Carolina. Curious that Republicans consider poorer, less educated, more homogeneous areas to be “realer” and more virtuous than places of diversity and economic vitality. Hardly surprising from a party that values hierarchy over progress.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
She’s the type you see in these here parts driving around in their Mercedes or Lexuses
The Mercedes ML and the Lexus CX 350 SUVs – official vehicles of Yuppie Douchebags everywhere. Everytime I see one with a cellphone plastered to the ear of said Yuppie Douchebag, I become that much more amenable to a Revolution of the Prolitariat.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Aw, giver a break. She really meant “Yankee occupied Virginia.”
October 18th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Seems to be the campaign theme among McCain’s womenfolk. Palin, Bachmann, Wilson, and now Pferwhatever, doing the country mouse- city mouse stratergery.
The country mice are pretty scary these days, at least to hear these rats tell it.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I guess when you boil it down and work through all the changes, it all comes down to:
We are the pod-people we’ve been waiting for.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Is McCain threatened by women who aren’t Barbie-doll brainless twits? Does he exclude any female from his campaign whose IQ is bigger than her bra size?
Passing over all the extremely qualified women in the GOP (e.g. Hutchinson, Dole, Whitman, Rice, Snowe, Collins), he picked Spunky Sarah the Moose Slayer. For a “business” adviser he picked ego-maniac Fiorina (famous mainly for destroying a legendary technology company, HP), who “campaigned” by stating that neither McCain nor Palin would be qualified to be CEO of a Fortune-500 company.
Last night on MSNBC’s Hardball, loony Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) made such a McCarthyite ass of herself that she managed to attract a flurry of donations (totalling $170K last I heard) to her Democratic opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg for Congress in less than 24 hours.
And now Pfotenhauer manages to insult a very significant portion of the population in a state McCain really needs to win.
I live in Fake Virginia, where a large part of population was already fired up and ready to go for Obama (and for Warner in the Senate race). This just adds fuel to the fire.
How can anybody who runs such an incompetent campaign claim he’s qualified to hold an office with the power to dispatch nuclear weapons?
October 18th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
It’s true, Northern Virginia is not real. I lived there for 10 years once, or at least thought I did. When I moved away I discovered that there was no Northern Virginia, there was no trace of my existence while I was there, none of the Northern Virginians I met and be-friended while there existed, and that because of the large gap in my record I was essentially unemployable. I am still trying to piece my life back together 14 years later, and although I have tried, I have still found no trace of Northern Virginia or my life there. Oh, you can find it on the map and get No. VA phone numbers, but try to go there or call there. You can’t, it doesn’t exist. I think the government is involved somehow in this hoax, but despite my best efforts have been unable thus far to find out what the motive is, what is going on.
If anyone can help me unravel this mystery, I would be forever grateful, as I am to Ms Pfotenhauer for getting the myth of Northern Virginia out on the table for all to see. She is absolutely right, it doesn’t exist.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
When I moved away I discovered that there was no Northern Virginia, there was no trace of my existence while I was there, none of the Northern Virginians I met and be-friended while there existed, and that because of the large gap in my record I was essentially unemployable.
You didn’t read the fine print on your security-clearance form, did you?
October 18th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I grew up in NoVa and since then lived in the rest of VA as an adult. There is of course a cultural divide, but it’s not that much different than any other state. Go from Salt Lake City to Utah county; from the Northwest corner of Indiana to the Ohio River Valley; from Seattle to the Western rural edges of Washington.
The thing about Virginia, though, is that there are plenty of pockets of Democrats and liberals around the state. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried in a town that’s reliably white upscale and Democratic, and Charlottesville’s even more liberal than Northern Virginia. A couple Southwest counties also went with Webb in 2006. Virginia Beach is conservative, but in a not-so-Southern way.
To hear the McCain campaign tell it, you’d think that Virignia’s political climate would feature a hard right Southern Virginia GOP versus a “communist” far left based in Northern Virginia. The Senate races in 2006 and now this year prove that only the first part of that equation is true. And the dumbest thing about these comments from the McCain campaign is that they’re treating NoVa as a block of lost voters that it’s okay to offend. But in fact Allen got 137,000 votes from Fairfax county–only 40% of the vote total there, but well over 10% of Allen’s overall votes. NoVa Republicans might not like being called fake Virginians, and having lived there I doubt they feel like their neighbors are far left.
October 18th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
How are all those in Virginia who are still fighting the Civil War going to call Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, it is now going to be called the Army of Fake Virginia.
October 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Y’know, Republicans tried to play on the rest of Pennyslvania’s resent towards Philadelphia (we Yinzers are especially bitter about this) when Rendell ran in 2002 and he still cleaned a solid Republican candidate’s clock. And this was in a year when the shadow of 9/11 gave the GOP a lot of momentum. The bottom line is that plyaing on geographicaly-based resentments are a weak tactic. Then again, given the polls, it’s probably all the GOP has in VA right now.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
My mother is from Alabama, and we once lived in West Virginia for a couple years. I remember my mother telling me she would meet people from Virginia and think their Southern accents were so thick they must have been making fun of her, until she realized they were for real. Then she made fun of them.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Like the fake Virginia of the slavery era, which is now the state of West Virginia.
Or like the infamous cultural divide between New York City and upstate New York (and there’s also Long Guyland). Cities don’t have much autonomy in NYS, and NYC landlords fight tenant protections by convincing upstaters that we NYC tenants are all a bunch of parasites (and no wonder, most of us are Democrats).
October 18th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Sorry to post 2x in a row, but do you mean the eastern rural edges of Washington?
October 18th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
This woman is a political hack and would have no position with governing.
Elections are brutal because all these political flacks who have nothing to do with governing get every word parsed.
Who cares what Nancy says.
McCain barely even knows her.
Obama’s closest advisor Samantha Power called Ohioans obsessed with trade and lamented jews financial import in america.
Obama and Power are soulmates.
McCain and Nancy aren’t close.
When can we get back to what the candidates say instead of this intense obsesion about what every flack out there says.
Running a campaign is not the same as governing.
McCain would have had serious people governing like tom kean.
McCain said he would move the political office outside of the white house.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
McCain went to high school in northern virginia.
McCain worked at the pentagon.
McCain lives in northern virginia.
McCain has his national headquaters in northern virginia and his state headquaters there.
Who the hell cares what Nancy something says.
Nancy is one of an absurd amount of political hacks.
Does anyone really think that Nancy or Tucker Bounds would have any effect on how McCain governs.
Who the hell cares what they say.
They have nothing to do with policy.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
To mark,
McCain was based in the hampton roads when he was in the navy.
McCain has deep ties with Virginia but his political career comes down to what some person with no policy position in the campaign says.
There are so many political flacks around who the hell cares what she says.
I hate this election campaign with every fiber in my body.
A good man McCain who loves northern virginia is being destroyed by this nonsense.
This election is brutal. I hate seeing McCain give his whole life as a public servent ripped apart by the media.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
This election is brutal. I hate seeing McCain give his whole life as a public servent ripped apart by the media.
Yeah, that really sucks.
Well, not really. Go ask him for some BBQ on Nov. 5th.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Wow, just when I thought the McCain campaign had the minimal chance of ending the divisiveness…
As a college student in urban St. Louis (and I’ve only been in the state for 2yrs.) when she said “rural Missouri” and “suburban St. Louis” it was crystal clear
Given the easy to notice, sharp racial division of St. Louis she might as well just be honest and say she’s interested in the 80-90% White
Christian parts of the state.
There’s definitely diversity of opinion in states like others mentioned (Jefferson/Hamilton, Upstate/NYC) but can we at least try to think about unifying?
October 19th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Which is why she’s now married to a Jewish guy.
The McCain campaign could have chosen not to send her on TV. The campaigns are sure to load their surrogates with a small number of talking points. McCain’s campaign has been about hitting on the urban vs. rural theme. He has no real policies to run on that anyone besides him cares about, so he confuses today’s America with 1980 and wonders why it doesn’t work.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Well of course. Just like all of Florida south of the panhandle is fake, what with all those Jews and all. I wonder, though: if the votes of all those non-pro-American parts of the country don’t really count, because they’re fake, does that mean they don’t have to pay taxes or obey the laws or anything like the “real” parts of the country? Just askin’.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Come on, people. When are we going to start forgiving campaign spokespeople because they are kind of foxy?
October 19th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Remember kids, learn from my mistake and always make sure to copy and paste the entire quote you’re referring to, otherwise you look stupid.
Anyway, is it really impossible for McCain to find a single intelligent woman around him? He hasn’t even had Condi give a speech for him, as far as I know.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
He and his party are both more or less openly hostile to women, and he’s obviously losing. If you were an intelligent woman, would *you* want to associate with him?
P.S. “Real” Virginia wouldn’t touch Charlottesville with a ten-foot pole. It’s a college town infested with intellectuals; the two biggest employers in town are a government-run university and a government-run hospital and medical school associated with the university.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I’ve haven’t seen anyone also notice that Nancy Pfotenour is completely wrong about where Northern Virginians come from. They don’t come from DC. They come from all over the country (government jobs, professional and high tech jobs based not in DC but VA), and apparently something like 1 in 6 now are foreign born. Some also come from *other parts of Virginia* that aren’t very plentiful in professional and high-skill jobs. James Madison, UVA and William and Mary graduates, many of whom are public school Virginia kids, have mainly two in-state options–NoVa or the Richmond area, and the former is better.
“from Seattle to the Western rural edges of Washington.
“…do you mean the eastern rural edges of Washington?”
Yes, sorry. I actually get left and right mixed up sometimes too.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I think there may actually be something to her comments. It seems like hardly anyone in Northern Virginia is actually originally from Virginia. Thus, it has different attitudes and political affiliations than the rest of the state. When driving to Clarke County for the Virginia Hot Air Balloon and Wine Festival, there were way McCain-Palin signs everywhere… made me think McCain might actually have a chance in VA. Of course, one high rise appt bldg in Alexandria might contain more Obama voters than there are McCain supporters in 20 square miles in rural parts.
“Northern Virginia” has actually hijacked the name in a sense, since the northernmost part of the state is around Winchester not Arlington.
For the posters blaming Virginia for the Civil War, I think you’d do better by blaming South Carolina.
–A Virginia Native
December 7th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Winchester — Time to flip on the “No Vacancy” sign — the city’s major hotels are already booked solid for Inauguration Day. Americans from all 50 states need a place to bunk Jan. 20 when President-elect Barack Obama takes his oath
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