It’s no Jackson or Montgomery, but we like it

A recent graduate of the Rupert Murdoch Academy of Smarm tried to get residents of one of North America’s most beautiful cities to agree that they live in a dystopian hellhole, with satisfyingly hilarious results:

Fox News tried to do a bunch of scary man-on-the-street interviews about crime. It didn't go well. pic.twitter.com/49PVjwgFBB— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) September 26, 2023

I particularly enjoy the bit where the slime merchant pretends to have been terrified by seeing someone shoot up, and then admit that he saw it from his car. In fairness, he does have a point that opioid addiction is surely only a problem in major coastal cities — certainly I cannot think of any recent articles, books, or dramatic miniseries that would suggest otherwise.

I’m reminded of this remarkable graf from Ross Douthat’s column attempting to deny that the America anti-abortion movement is what it record says it is:

Moreover, certain redoubts of contemporary progressivism have a grimmer spirit — unhappy, sterile, future-fearing — than the youthful atmosphere of 1960s liberalism in which the abortion rights movement won so many victories. If Alabama and Mississippi aren’t the best advertisements for the pro-life vision, neither are Seattle and San Francisco necessarily brilliant advertisements for where uncut social liberalism ends up.

People who think that “likelihood that you might see a homeless person” is the only metric by which cities should be judged are deeply, deeply weird.