City of Peoria, Peoria Journal Star

Don’t take it so personally, PJS

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I know this is old news, but I didn’t get a chance to comment on this at the time, and B.J.’s recent post about Ann Coulter reminded me of it again….

The Journal Star was all out of sorts on Thursday when syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts said in his column that Ann Coulter’s book “plays in Peoria.” They were so incensed, you would have thought the guy personally called up the editorial board and told them, “eh, your mother wears army boots.”

My advice to the PJS: let it go. He wasn’t talking about Peoria, Illinois, or the fine people who live here. The Miami-based Pitts probably can’t even readily locate Peoria on a map. “Does it play in Peoria?” is just a generic phrase that means “does it appeal to mainstream America?”

The JS said, “We tried to reach Pitts, without success.” Thank goodness! I hope they stopped trying. Can we please stop embarrassing ourselves by attempting to cleanse the English language of this phrase? Does the Indianapolis Star get incensed every time someone in Missouri uses “Hoosier” in a derogatory manner?

Pitts isn’t hurting Peoria’s reputation. Journal Star columnist Phil Luciano did more to embarrass Peoria when he appeared on the nationally-broadcast “Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know” program on NPR in 2000 (“Peoria is 20 road houses and a strip joint”), but I don’t remember any hue and cry over that in the editorial page….

One thought on “Don’t take it so personally, PJS”

  1. ““Does it play in Peoria?” is just a generic phrase that means “does it appeal to mainstream America?””

    That’s actually what was annoying about it – he was using “plays in Peoria” to describe something that was DIVISIVE, not mainstream. If he was going to use the phrase, he ought to have used it right.

    Also: “The Miami-based Pitts probably can’t even readily locate Peoria on a map.”

    This has driven me crazy for YEARS. It always drove me nuts to be in Europe and have someone get really offended that I’d not heard of their tiny town where Charlemagne’s horse tripped (okay, that was at the Grossmunster in Zurich, but you get my point) and go on and on about how Americans know no geography and are so poorly educated, and then when I said I was from Chicago they’d be like, “what’s that?” or “near Orlando?”

    I guess being in flyover country at least keeps the annoying coastal people from moving here. 😛 Except for Mr. McGee, of course.

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