Opinion: And home of the Amish chain gangs

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Long before he was identified as a mouthpiece for Bill Cinton, James Carville was (in)famous in my home state of Pennsylvania for the “guru ad,” a 1986 campaign commercial for the original Bob Casey that savaged Casey’s Republican opponent for governor, Bill Scranton III, as a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The ad, which showed the image of a younger, long-haired Scranton to the sinister accompaniment of sitar music, was aired only in the conservative midsection of Pennsylvania and not in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Casey won.

I thought of the guru ad the other day when The Politico recycled, and desconstructed, a famous Carville exercise in political geograophy. I always thought Carville had described the Keystone State as “Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Mississippi in the middle.” But The Politico’s version was more parochial still: “Carville described the state as Paoli (a suburb of Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) with Alabama in between.”

Alabama, Mississippi — what’s the difference? Either way, Carville was equating my native state’s Bible Belt — and receptive audience for guru-bashing ads — as Hicksville, a point that sticks in the craw of some Southerners.

I’ve been to both Penn Hills and Paoli, and they are as different from each other as either is from Pottsville, Pa. — or Punxatawney, of “Groundhog Day” fame. Pennsylvania is a big place, and a diverse one, which is why Carville’s caricature was onto something in its crude way.

Pennsylvania is enjoying its day in the political sun now that — for the first time in my career as a journalist — its presidential primary is actually the object of national attention. If nothing else, this unaccustomed attention will mean some journalistic pilgrimages to the cheesesteak emporiums of Philadelphia, the shot-and-a-beer bars of Pittsburgh and the pecan farms — I mean pretzel factories — of Hanover.