Wanted: Johnson Countians Willing To Talk About Kansas Now With Me (Kansas City: neighborhood, university)

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by brooksider2brooklyn

Sure, but don't you think people would be annoyed if there were large university of Missouri ads there? Hospital or not. It's still Mizzou ads in Kansas.

Are there KU ads at whatever the stadium(s) are at Mizzou? No.


Lawrence/KU are a whole lot closer to Kansas City than Columbia/Mizzou are. KU is more in the Kansas City region than Mizzou.

[brooksider2brooklyn]

Sure I guess. I don't really care. I just noticed the ads. I think we are all over thinking this or maybe I was.

[TabulaRasa]

I would approach anybody you'd like to talk to privately via DM, since it's pretty clear that it's impossible to have any kind of discussion without a particular contingent being petty, dip****ty, raging *******s.

Future topic - "Why are keyboard warriors so much more invested in keeping a border war going than anybody in real life is?"

[Truly Missouri]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

I would approach anybody you'd like to talk to privately via DM, since it's pretty clear that it's impossible to have any kind of discussion without a particular contingent being petty, dip****ty, raging *******s.

Future topic - "Why are keyboard warriors so much more invested in keeping a border war going than anybody in real life is?"

Real life? As of just yesterday:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine says he would

A border war is a border war.

[KC_Sleuth]

To the OP: I am not from KC originally, and so I didn't grow up with this "border war" thing. My wife grew up in KCK and is a Wyandotte High/Donnelly grad; but she is a war refuge from Laos so even our most impoverished areas provide a much better quality of life than what she might have had. I have lived in, worked in, and owned property on both sides of the state line. It honestly never made much of a difference to me. I certainly don't understand the outrage over having KU Hospital ads at the K. Yes, the corp. office poaching gets a little silly but metro-wide it doesn't make a huge impact. I don't identify much with Topeka or Jeff City, Brownback or Nixon, etc...I just see KC as a metro area that is shared by two states. The whole squabble seems rather silly. Both states are largely rural - we are a fairly large city. We won't share much in common with most of either state (outside of STL and Wichita).

I grew up pretty close to a border...my dad's house was about 3 miles from Canada and our US city was more than happy to share our NFL team and cultural attractions with people from Southern Ontario. Yeah, we used to get a little annoyed when Toronto Maple Leafs fans would invade our hockey arena and turn it into their home rink. My wife looks at the "border war" with even more incredulity - she considers it the pinnacle of "first world problems".

As for your original question, I live near Shawnee Mission South and registered as Republican so I could vote in the primaries. I am politically moderate or slight left of moderate on most issues (especially on social issues); there are some fiscal conservative positions I & understand identify with. There were a few moderate Republicans on the slate that I wanted to vote for as a reaction to what I felt was mismanagement in Topeka (hence my Republican voting registration - otherwise I would have been an independent). A good public school system is important to me, and I want to continue the great services we pay for in Johnson County. I believe in strong cities, and strong metro areas with good suburbs...and I think a good suburb should provide great services to improve quality of life. I live in KS House District 20 and KS Senate District 11...both Kesinger and Skubal had some reasonable positions and I felt that the incumbents were using fuzzy math to support the disastrous 2011 tax cuts. As for Topeka, I think the primary results had to send a message. In regards to the poaching, I don't see it as disastrous because for the most part, the people follow the jobs as long as they stay in the metro. Nobody is directly being put out of work if a corporate office moves from the core to Leawood/OP or vice-versa. Sure, the tax revenue destination changes...the city E-tax base may change a bit for the workers already living in Kansas, but there have been a bunch of companies moving the other way as well. I would bet that most of it is wasted effort...I would think it's mostly been a wash up until this point, and probably should stop.

I would by happy to answer other questions.

[katie45]

Originally Posted by kcmo

Johnson Countians discussing the real topics that plague Kansas and Metro KC? Unless those topics are about how the KCMO schools are un-acredited or how many homicides KCMO has every year or how many meth houses are in Independence, I don't think so. Most have no idea that these rather large problems (corporate welfare, school funding, tea party government, suburban sprawl/decay, terrible regional cooperation etc) even exist or they just could not care less.

They will tell you about how great the schools are (you know the 2 or 3 districts in the entire state they have for now) and how well the newest retail corridor is doing (I guess that would be 151st street now?) and still try to mention how JoCo is one of the richest counties in the nation. That's about all they care to discuss.

Good luck .

Nice colunm by the way.

Originally Posted by luzianne

Not biased much against Johnson County, are you? Pot/kettle?

I'm not surprised either luzianne because his sole passion in life appears to be the bashing of Kansas.

As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much". In this instance it's 'KCMO doth protest too much'.

The saying usually describes someone's frequent attempts to convince others of some matter of which the opposite is true, thereby making themselves appear defensive and insincere.

Why he is so adamantly against anything having to do with Kansas is certainly a mystery. . . could be he was jilted by someone on the KS side? And since he no longer lives in the Kansas City area it is amazing he continues his campaign against KS.

[brooksider2brooklyn]

^ Call me crazy, but you guys are doing exactly what kcmo said you would. Jo County people just will not talk about these topics. They will only talk about other people in a negative tone for even bringing up these topics. I grew up blocks from Kansas. I know this all too well.

[Truly Missouri]

Originally Posted by brooksider2brooklyn

^ Call me crazy, but you guys are doing exactly what kcmo said you would. Jo County people just will not talk about these topics. They will only talk about other people in a negative tone for even bringing up these topics. I grew up blocks from Kansas. I know this all too well.

Exactly! +1

The rage, the insults, the profanities, the sensitivity, we couldn't even get past the first page without the typical.

[MarketStEl]

I'm going to wait a little while before contacting any of the people so far who have either expressed willingness to be quoted or at least not expressed an unwillingness to do so, but I feel I need to offer my own 2 cents on the whole University of Kansas Hospitals-ads-at-Royals Stadium flap that's erupted here.

I do share kcmo's concern about outsiders getting confused about which Kansas City is the region's center; my stock response to comments like "What was it like growing up in Kansas?" when I tell people around where I live now where I grew up is:

"If I were from Kansas City, Kansas, I would have said so."

(Then I usually explain that this distinction actually reflects local usage in the area.)

But:

As I already said, my Mom's a Jayhawk. Not only that, she was a nurse - and the first black woman to receive both a BSN (1954) and an MSN (1970) from the University of Kansas School of Nursing. Which means she spent a lot of time around 39th Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard. For me, the University of Kansas Medical Center (as it was known when I was growing up) is as important a part of my "heritage" as anything else in the area, including my years at Pembroke Hill. I also spent some time nosing around Mt. Oread on some evenings when she needed to go to the main KU library to do research. It's one reason why I consider Lawrence cooler than Columbia.

Besides, the University of Kansas Hospitals are (from what I can tell from this distance) the best in the metropolitan region. I think they're an asset that everyone in the area should be able to point to with pride.

So, acknowledging the possible confusion it may cause, I'd say, let those ads stay right where they are.

Carry on as before.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

I'm going to wait a little while before contacting any of the people so far who have either expressed willingness to be quoted or at least not expressed an unwillingness to do so, but I feel I need to offer my own 2 cents on the whole University of Kansas Hospitals-ads-at-Royals Stadium flap that's erupted here.

I do share kcmo's concern about outsiders getting confused about which Kansas City is the region's center; my stock response to comments like "What was it like growing up in Kansas?" when I tell people around where I live now where I grew up is:

"If I were from Kansas City, Kansas, I would have said so."

(Then I usually explain that this distinction actually reflects local usage in the area.)

But:

As I already said, my Mom's a Jayhawk. Not only that, she was a nurse - and the first black woman to receive both a BSN (1954) and an MSN (1970) from the University of Kansas School of Nursing. Which means she spent a lot of time around 39th Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard. For me, the University of Kansas Medical Center (as it was known when I was growing up) is as important a part of my "heritage" as anything else in the area, including my years at Pembroke Hill. I also spent some time nosing around Mt. Oread on some evenings when she needed to go to the main KU library to do research. It's one reason why I consider Lawrence cooler than Columbia.

Besides, the University of Kansas Hospitals are (from what I can tell from this distance) the best in the metropolitan region. I think they're an asset that everyone in the area should be able to point to with pride.

So, acknowledging the possible confusion it may cause, I'd say, let those ads stay right where they are.

Carry on as before.

Basically what I have said. You simply can't argue that KU Hospital is a great asset to metro KC and probably one of the best hospitals in the region. They are finally starting to build up the KU Med area into a full blown urban research campus too. But living on the east coast now for some time, for once it would be nice if KC had its own identity and Kansas was not a part of it. KC is so different from what people imagine "kansas" to be like. KCMO and Kansas could not be more different, especially compared to the stereotypical image of Kansas. I don't care to claim Missouri either. KC needs its own identity. The KU ads are fine, but I wouldn't mind if they changed them one bit.