Anchor Cecily Strong took the opportunity to slam what she and the show’s other writers apparently see as just another backwards Midwestern town after discussing Abigail Miller’s story.
Even though a good bit of people from America’s coasts originated in the Midwest, we Midwesterners are often targeted.
We are portrayed as corn-fed, racist, homophobic… or simply toothless bumpkins.
Between presidential elections, Ohio in particular gets passed over. Dayton gets dissed and dismissed even in presidential election years.
The slamming has come from much bigger players than SNL. We manage to brush it off and carry on like the hardworking Midwesterners we are.
Dissed by the FAA
The federal agency recently rejected the joint application from Ohio and Indiana that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s location helped make this region an ideal drone test site.
Good argument, but FAA administrators didn’t like us or any other Midwest community.
Even with no drones, the Dayton Development Coalition is expecting a productive 2014.
Dissed by NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave the Birth Place of Aviation and really several other deserving cities a swift kick in the face in 2011 when it selected the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York, the California Science Center in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as sites for its space shuttles.
The National Museum of the Air Force will officially open its Space Shuttle exhibition featuring NASA's first Crew Compartment Trainer.
Dissed by GM
The closing in 2008 of the General Motors Moraine Assembly truck plant was likened to a 'death knell' for the city in one CNN.com article.
GM stopped assembling Chevrolet Trailblazer, GMC Envoy and other vehicles at the plant. It let go 1,000 workers at the start of the Great Recession. The plant had employed more than 4,000 workers in years before its stunning closure.
Fuyao, a Chinese auto parts producer, recently announced it will bring 800 jobs to the former GM plant off Ohio 741 and Stroop Road.
Dissed by NCR
Many thought all was lost when Dayton-founded NCR announced in 2009 that it would relocate its headquarters to suburban Atlanta and pull out of the Miami Valley.
The company moved most of its 1,300 jobs from Dayton to Georgia by the end of 2010.
The site of NCR’s former headquarter is now home of University of Dayton Research Institute.
The recently opened $53 million GE Aviation electrical power research and design center is located nearby on another former NCR site.
SNL’s little joke doesn’t even compare to any of that.
As we told you last week, Abigail Miller is a 23-year-old woman with two jobs. She was reunited with her dog Zoro after posting a flier in the Wayne Avenue Kroger offering a case of beer and a pack of cigarettes in return for the dog who she adopted three years ago from an animal shelter.
Explaining the offbeat reward, Miller said it was something she could afford and something that would get attention to return her beloved dog.
Ten days after the microchipped husky went missing, a customer contacted Miller and told her he saw people walking the dog and where he thought Zoro could be found.
Miller retrieved her pooch about two weeks ago.
The man who called Miller did not accept the reward, a fact that apparently didn’t fit into Strong’s joke.
“A woman in Ohio who had lost her dog got him back after she posted fliers offering a case of beer and a pack of cigarettes as a reward,” Strong said on the show. “That was all the reward that was needed in the little town of Dirtbag, Ohio.”
Sadly - even with the setup Miller’s story gave it - that was the best SNL could do.
This of course has ticked off more than a few Dayton folks.
It has also led some to say lighten up. To that, I channel a 14-year-old and say "whatever."
It is not that the city and state can’t take a joke. A joke should at least be funny.
Instead of something clever, SNL went with the typical crack.
The punchline could have easily been Dirtbag, Illinois; Dirtbag, Indiana; Dirtbag, Iowa; Dirtbag, Missouri or Dirtbag, Any Other State That isn’t New York or California.
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