Not So Creative

Dear Reader,

You must forgive me a moment for being hacked off in this blog post.

I just read the now infamous Vanity Fair article on the Creation Museum and Cincinnati.

I can't stand to hold my tongue any longer.

It might be the most uninformed, snobbish article I've ready from a magazine I usually enjoy picking up at the newsstand.

Lets put aside the Creation Museum itself for a minute. That's another topic for another time. I'm not going to engage in a debate about what the museum stands for or if I agree with it's premise.

But I will debate anyone who dares to act like Cincinnati and the surrounding counties are hopelessly backward places with "meager pickings to boast about."

Cheap shots are in my opinion useless at best and at worst, tasteless.

I could forgive A.A Gill if he and Paul Bettany (an actor I've always liked on the big screen) actually spent time in Greater Cincinnati before deriding it or calling it a place where "tennis is considered a game for Europeans." Unfortunately, neither one did so. They saw a small part of the area and called the dish done.

They hadn't even started cooking.

(By the way, I learned to play tennis last summer and I am not a European.)

Like every city, Cincinnati has its shortcomings and it's downfalls. Growing up here, I used to complain to the high heavens that "this town has nothing to do," and that "everything happens here later than everywhere else."

I find myself thinking that less the longer I live here as an adult.

When I moved back to town in June 2007, I suddenly saw a beautiful city with culture and life I'd never considered. In three years I've met a number of creative and innovative people--most of them young professionals. I've seen a city that can offer me a Broadway play on Tuesday night, drinks at a downtown hot spot on Wednesday, a major concert on Friday, and a charity ball on Saturday. I know a few great people who really love this city, who are committed to making the Queen City better. Allow Cincinnati to grow on you and she will, right along with Northern Kentucky, Southeast Indiana, and the other counties that make up Southwest Ohio.

Cincinnati, my friends, simply doesn't get enough credit.

It's time someone stopped and took notice, instead of pulling off a highway exit and deciding they know best.

Perhaps A.A. Gill would like do that next summer, at the ATP tennis tournament in Warren County. It, too, is right off the highway.