What's the Matter With Arizona?

It’s a bad time to be an Arizonan. Even my mother, who expatriated from New York 30 years ago, admitted to me recently that our Arizona heritage had become “an embarrassment.” In the past few years the state of my birth, once known for its desert landscape and cowboy history, has been reduced to a string of diminutives in certain, generally liberal coastal circles: “That racist state, with the crazy governor and the fascist sheriff.” Nowadays, when asked where I’m from, I feel compelled to insert asterisks in my answer. “I grew up in Arizona — but haven’t lived there for eight years,” I’ll say. This distinction is necessary for us natives to affirm that our state wasn’t always a punch line; it was only recently that we devolved into a recognizable unflattering stereotype, like Texas, East St. Louis or Gary, Indiana.