Miserable-Who'd Have Thunk It?

The big news this week was Memphis discovered it was "miserable". While part of the matrix for determining our misery was utter crap (pro sports team's record), just about any combination of social, political, or economic indicators would have gotten us to #3. I didn't really pay too much attention to this ranking, but after a couple days of our collective political class going berserk, a friend of mine asked the question "why the freak out?" If you are a politician in this city and you don't know Memphis ranks at or near the bottom for about everything, except honest mechanics, either you are clueless or you just didn't care until someone pointed it out. This is what my friend got. Our politicians understand how polarized and dysfunctional our city is. Rather than address those fundamental issues causing this, they generally just perpetuate the political culture. That political culture is marketing/PR not actually governance. The marketing/PR facade got called and exposed failed governance. It took a big magazine from out of town to do it and that's why everyone freaked out. (Note this is not an endorsement of consolidation.)

The last few years I have used this blog to try to show people the problems plaguing our city making us "miserable". Well, I guess chickens have come home to roost. Before I go though, take a moment to weigh the usage of terms like "misery" and "happiness". The "happiest" country in the world last year was Nigeria.