D: Yeah. Which means that—maybe that in part explains both Prescott, and Arizona’s, conservative natures, because people from conservative cities like Cincinnati move to areas like Arizona, which may have been unsullied. Who knows? Maybe Prescott was a pure and open place and then it just became Arizona conservative-like because all these foreigners, these out-of-staters, these retirees, came, and of course, as people get older, and their incomes rise, their politics seem to shift to the right in proportion, the old saying that a liberal is a conservative who’s been mugged, or something like that, ahm, who knows?

S: If you’re not a liberal in your twenties, you don’t have a heart, if you’re not a conservative by your forties, you don’t have a brain. The old saying.

D: That’s another good old saying, yeah. Well, I’m happy to say that I don’t have no brains at all, having reached that milestone, and yet, having not given up some of the liberal fantasies that would get me a lot of bad ink in certain places.

S: Yeah, sometimes I sort of wish I was a Republican, because their lives seem so much easier, ah—

[Dirk laughs.]

S: So free of guilt, you know? There’s things, I think, that as a conservative Republican, you can truly believe in, that, as liberal intellectuals, we don’t have that privilege any more.

D: Do you have an example?

S: Yeah, like, ah, business school.

D: Oh, belief in business?

S: Yeah. Like, you can believe, as a conservative, you can believe that, by going to your 9-to-5 job, uhm, growing the economy, ah, downsizing corporations, ah, making, you know, ten times the average salary of an American, that you are actually doing a good thing. That it’s actually like—Not that you’re not doing a bad thing, even, but that you’re doing what you’re meant to do in life, you’re progressing, you’re, ah, making the world a better place, by gathering material belongings.

D: By giving yourself over to the invisible hand that controls the market system, you are doing a form of obedience that is proper, and maybe even ordained by God, if you follow the reasoning of—

S: Calvin?

D: Some ah—

S: Well, yeah, pretty much the establishment—

D: —the Pat Robertsons that pretty much are firmly in the back pocket of big corporate [We pull up next to a big billboard for La Rosa’s Pizza, a local restaurant chain.]—there it is, see there’s that stupid, “It’s good here.”

S: “It’s good here” in Cincinnati.

D: You know, but the funny thing about this ad campaign, “It’s good here.” Have you heard some of the radio spots for this, Scott? Probably not, but—

S: Yeah, I have. Right before I left, actually. Which made me wish I was staying.

D: Well, I was describing this ad campaign to Cynthia, who had not heard it, or seen the billboards, and during my first description, I was under the mistaken impression that these Cincinnati backpatting commercials were the product of some Chamber of Commerce, or like the City Council, that were actually trying to convince us that Cincinnati is a good place, as if they were losing their tax base or something, and needed to convince people to stick around.

S: No, it’s just to convince people that the pizza’s good here.

D: Exactly. But the thing is, is that those commercials, even that billboard there, the corporate tie-in, the business tie-in, is so muted, is so understated, that I had forgotten entirely that it was just a regular old ad campaign by some company trying to sell on our nostalgia heartstrings and make us feel good about them, by feeling good about Cincinnati.

S: Well, I think in Cincinnati, you’re meant to associate living here with consuming certain products, and paying obeisance to certain corporations.

D: Which explains the survival of Skyline Chili.

S: Skyline Chili, La Rosa’s. You eat Skyline and La Rosa’s.

D: I’d go to La Rosa’s over Skyline every time, let’s face it. La Rosa’s has food that you could eat.

S: If you’re doing good in Cincinnati, you work for Procter & Gamble, or you work for Chiquita, or you work for Kroger Brands.

D: And suck the dick of the Bengals, and the Reds, and then bend over and say, “Stadiumize me. Stadiumize me.”

S: Yeah, well. A town likes a nice stadium. . . .