This was a question asked by a reader of a recent post. It's a fair question that deserves an answer. I will try to be concise.
1. I am not selling anything associated with the sunshine/real estate Ponzi scheme, so I have no reason to lie to the boobs -- oops, potential customers from the Midwest or inland California about the true state of affairs in Arizona.
2. I am not one of the boobs from the Midwest or inland California who bought into what was billed as "a piece of unspoiled Sonoran Desert -- with championship golf!," only to find dreary suburbia in a frying pan set on high. And now I'm too embarrassed to admit I was a sucker but angry at anyone who implies it.
3. I am not a member of the Real Estate Industrial Complex or the Kookocracy. Therefore, I don't profit from either the booster growthgasm Kook-Aid, the ongoing destruction of the state or the constant inflaming of grievances against "guvment," brown people or columnists who speak truth to power.
4. I am a mean, mean man.
"Why do I hate Arizona." I got this kind of question or criticism regularly when I wrote an opinion column for the Arizona Republic. I was just a simple, small-town boy from Phoenix raising some questions -- but it was a danger to the powers-that-be. It was fascinating on multiple levels. For example, here was Phoenix, which kept braying about being "the nation's fifth largest city," and yet it couldn't handle the kind of dissenting columnist that one expects in a real big city. Indeed, Phoenix was and remains a place of little debate. How else can one keep the Ponzi scheme going? Even when it has crashed and burned.
Now, I vigorously supported a host of efforts to better the community, from luring TGen to building light rail; I celebrated real leaders, from Paul Fannin to Alan Brunacini to Michael Crow; I wrote the Arizona and Phoenix history that was missing from the newspaper and the knowledge of most readers. But, I criticized the Growth Machine and its power. I raised uncomfortable issues, such as the neglect of the poor and immigrants, the limited, low-wage economy, the backwardness of much policy and the state's vulnerability on water and climate change. To me, this is what a real columnist is supposed to do. To a certain cohort: I hated Arizona (and had to be silenced).
That I still write about Phoenix and Arizona actually exposes a certain irrational idealism that I can't quite get out of my system (as well as serving readers who can't get this conversation elsewhere). I am from there, after all, with deep ties of blood and the heart. I didn't just roll in from Iowa wanting to be left alone. The state and city's deficiencies and perils pain me. The loss of so much that made city and state unique breaks my heart. The willful refusal to prepare Arizona to confront and prosper in the Great Disruption makes me mad.
More to the point, no place has a quality future when it isn't willing to acknowledge and discuss its challenges. The long history of boosterism in Arizona has metastasized into a culture of censorship, self-delusion and silence. Please, God, give me one more boom...
But I get to ask questions, too.
To the people who sold off and paved over the citrus groves and farm fields that gave Phoenix so much of its magic and its cooling as well as a food export and self-sufficiency that will be very important someday...Why do you hate Arizona?
To the ones who destroyed the enchanting Japanese Gardens to create miles of lookalike Spanish-Tuscan schlock...Why do you hate Arizona?
You, the leaders across the spectrum who refuse to own up to the total unsustainability of water supplies for continued sprawl. "Let's add 4 million people to the Sun Corridor!"...Why do you hate Arizona?
The charter school and "school choice" racket with its tentacles in the Legislature and the East Valley elite, with no accountability, taking money from public education and profiting from a failed system while the underclass grows. Arizona consistently ranks at or near the bottom in school funding, near the top in dropouts -- but let's not discuss that; better yet, let's explain it away...Why do you hate Arizona?
To the Kookocracy, which claims to be the heirs of Goldwater, Rhodes and Fannin, but whose sole accomplishments are to keep the state backward but armed while they profit on the side...Why do you hate Arizona?
To the sharpies who did land swaps to profane the Mogollon Rim and much of the High Country with subdivisions, while the National Forests and Parks are being polluted, burned, infested with killer parasites (caused partly by urban heat and water use) and being used as garbage dumps...Why do you hate Arizona?
To the vandals who rammed one of your precious freeways (those had already worked out so well in LA) through the heart of Phoenix, obliterating hundreds of irreplaceable historic houses. Who leveled block after block of vintage houses near the capitol, including Victorians and territorial-era apartments, as well as hundreds of commercial buildings. In other cities, these were the foundations of a downtown renaissance. In Phoenix, they were in the way of becoming the land-banked, blighted vacant lots many remain to this day...Why do you hate Arizona?
To the ones who fight to underfund the universities, kill the downtown biosciences campus, vilify or marginalize the heroes who keep trying to make the place better, continue to block sensible planning and urban solutions. Never mind that the state's income lags even a national average that includes Mississippi and Alabama, and Phoenix wages are well below its peers...Why do you hate Arizona?
You built a Super Wal-Mart across from the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. You cut down shade trees in central Phoenix and threw down gravel. You want to build 400 more miles of freeways in the age of high-speed trains. You raised Phoenix's temperatures 10 degrees and often drag summer to Thanksgiving, but let's not talk about that. You bulldoze ancient saguaros that took ten years to grow an inch and a half, just to pull a quick buck. Having one of the worst child poverty rates in the nation is OK with you, because, after all, it's those people. You don't support local businesses. You don't support the arts or charities -- because, after all, this isn't really home. You don't vote. You claim the place has no history and isn't worth caring about, worth fighting for. Better to live behind a wall and recite the zombie chant: "everything's fine here...everything's fine here...low taxes...guns in bars...low taxes...championship golf..."
Why the hell do you hate Arizona?
I posted that question as a joke, but glad you answered just the same.
When I encountered one of your former colleagues and told her I thought you should be governor, her response was "I'd rather have a governor who didn't hate Arizona".
Anyway, why do you hate America?
Posted by: Boor | September 30, 2009 at 08:58 AM
Great post, Mr. Talton! I love the way you first defused, then turned the question around. Literary ju jitsu in action.
Speaking of approaching climate, water, and other sustainability problems, Krugman of the NYT included a disturbing prognosis in an opinion piece titled Cassandras of Climate:
"For example, one 2007 paper in the journal Science is titled "Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America" — yes, "imminent" — and reports "a broad consensus among climate models" that a permanent drought, bringing Dust Bowl-type conditions, "will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades." "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/316/5828/1181
No doubt the Kookocracy would say that (a) there is no problem, and (b) the solution to the problem, if there is one, is to cut taxes on the wealthy and spending on the poor, and eliminate pesky government regulation. Because when all you have is a hammer...
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | September 30, 2009 at 09:18 AM
Boor -- I figured you were being ironic. But it was a great starting point...and one many have raised without irony.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | September 30, 2009 at 09:28 AM
This reads so much like Ed Abbey's "The BLOB Comes to Arizona", and that's a damn good thing!
Posted by: Dave | September 30, 2009 at 09:30 AM
I love you for having a voice. For having balls. For speaking your mind - and for calling it like you see it - like it is...
Having lived in many cities (Minneapolis, Chicago, L.A.), and having lived in AZ for 11 years now; I find it creepy that people here seem terrified to "rock the boat." More so than any other city I've lived in. It's really weird to me.
What happened to being proud of your beliefs? Agreeing to disagree? Standing up for those weaker than you? Actually being a human being?
I have a love/hate relationship with AZ for everything you talked about and more.
Believing in baby steps is necessary for me to live here and I will continue to simply try - one drunk midget step at a time - and speak my thoughts passionately.
Thank you for doing the same.
Posted by: Satcey Champion | September 30, 2009 at 09:44 AM
p.s. I should clarify I'm not drunk OR a midget...
Posted by: Satcey Champion | September 30, 2009 at 09:52 AM
It doesn't sound like he hates America to me- it sounds like he hates what the corporate swine at the trough have turned America into. Dude has the right of it- good for him!”
Thanks, man. I’m a new reader, and thank gawd someone said it. I live in Tucson’s downtown for exactly the reasons you discussed in the rant against master communities. They suck ass.
Posted by: Rachel | September 30, 2009 at 09:53 AM
The animus toward Talton always surprised me. It's one thing to be a libertarian/cornucopian who sees everything good as deriving from correct beliefs. But the hostility to a dissenting viewpoint suggests just how religious this belief system became in our lives. Talton blasphemed a rather horrifying god (Growth) and the faithful were not amused.
I used to post in a forum that celebrated the vertical aesthetic of growth, but which in fact accepted uncritically any and all growth, including freeways and far-flung exurban subdivisions. I pointed out that the two were mutually exclusive, that one tended to undercut the other and that a state with ultra-low density didn't require real cities with tall skyscrapers. Imposition of growth boundaries would have helped here to increase density (and the tall buildings adolescent males revere). But all I did was further exacerbate that tension between belief and empiricism. Unexamined beliefs trump empirical evidence with extraordinary ferocity. One correspondent wished death on Talton.
The pathos of Arizona lies in this painful refusal to acknowledge limits. We can't have everything even though we decided we could have the next best thing: crap everywhere.
Posted by: soleri | September 30, 2009 at 10:21 AM
Amen. I share your outrage!
Posted by: Liz | September 30, 2009 at 11:43 AM
Preach on, Mr. Talton. You have many loyal readers/fans from when you were a columnist at the Republic -- who have followed you over to Rogue, I might add. Keep doing what you're doing; the Kooks can't escape you.
Posted by: ChrisInDenver | September 30, 2009 at 12:35 PM
Thank you for giving voice to the frustrations many of us share in Phoenix. Thanks for not settling into the lie of "everything is hunky dorey, let's just keep growing bigger and bigger". Here's to a better tomorrow with better choices and hoping that we've learned from our mistakes.
Posted by: Taz Loomans | September 30, 2009 at 01:52 PM
Satcey Champion wrote:
"p.s. I should clarify I'm not drunk OR a midget..."
Technically speaking, you might still be BOTH if you're using "OR" in its "exclusive" sense (as a Boolean operator).
And you must admit, the name is strongly reminiscent of a drunk midget: probably a professional wrestler who, in an inebriated state, transposed portions of his or her first name...Stacey instead of Satcey. And Champion is your stage name.
Therefore, I prefer to conclude that you are, indeed, a drunk, female, midget professional wrestler. A highly deceptive, drunk female midget professional wrestler, since you sought to characterize this misleading statement as a "clarification".
Stop trying to fool us!
Posted by: Widget | September 30, 2009 at 05:41 PM
The saddest thing is that there are too few with the vision or the resources to rescue our once-wonderful state. Corporate leadership has diminished in numbers and influence. Media has largely devolved into slimmed-down staffs with little capacity for true investigative reporting. The legislature has turned into a hornet's nest of idealogs with little leadership or public respect.
So I'd ask my treasured friend, Mr. Talton who he thinks might rise to the occasion! There's no THERE there!
Posted by: Jim Hamblin | September 30, 2009 at 09:16 PM
I love this post... thank you for writing it so well. The biggest thing that kills me is transportation... or the lack of it. I've said since I moved here in 99... "whoever's running arizona is 15 years behind"... I could be right or off by a little but you get the point
Posted by: UpChuck | October 02, 2009 at 04:37 PM
As a former Mesa (and now Gilbert) resident, I miss Talton's incendiary columns that made EV neo-cons to have conniption fits. Republicans here don't even understand their own philosophy or history. It's Talk Radio Nation. TRN is the real think-tank behind the politics here. Basically, people who couldn't pass a community college poli sci course.
Posted by: Matt Self | October 02, 2009 at 06:14 PM
Excellent post. As a native, the age old complaint I so tire of hearing is that there is no "neighborly" feeling in my neighborhood, or, "I cannot count on Arizonans to follow through with a commitment". It is very rare that I meet someone local to Arizona, primarily because most Arizonans are transplants from another state, yet in almost every instance it is a transplant that is complaining or contributing to the reputation. So please, if you can't step up and aid in change, repack your Winnebago and be on your merry way, or just shut up.
Posted by: Paul | October 02, 2009 at 06:14 PM
We in Florida encounter a lot of the same Growth-is-God mentality, and hostility toward any reporter or columnist who dares to challenge it. Such critics are written off as "Yankees who moved here and got theirs and now want to close the door behind them." What amazes me is the slick way that officials present a facade of caring about the environment -- the local governments appoint Growth Management Commissions with advisory powers only and think they've done enough. A new big box might be made to put in a little landscaping but it never will be rejected.
Posted by: beachcomberT | October 03, 2009 at 03:19 AM
In a previous article, Mr. Talton wrote:
"Phoenix had a slam-dunk in the boom years if it had exploited the winning of T-Gen and the beginning of the downtown biomedical center to build it out as a major biomed hub, including medical, nursing and pharma schools, research, a hospital, pharmaceutical companies and biotech startups. It failed to do this."
http://roguecolumnist.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/2009/04/phoenix-dubai-and-other-heat-dreams.html
Today's Arizona Republic (Saturday, October 3rd) had a small, one-paragraph item buried in the Business section, in a list of news-blurbs called In Your Region. (You won't find it online.) It reads as follows:
"A new study shows that TGen, the downtown Phoenix-based bio-science research group, last year produced $8 for every $1 invested by the state -- more than twice its economic benefits of two years earlier."
And that was during a recession year. Score: Talton 1, Kookocracy 0.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 03, 2009 at 02:33 PM
"Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding 19,000 jobs in September, but construction jobs slipped by 64,000, manufacturing declined by 51,000 and retail lost 39,000 jobs."
The New York Times, on the Labor Department report for September employment data, just released.
(Arizona's economy relies largely on construction and retail, along with tourism -- also down. Meanwhile, the state has a shortage of trained nurses, but plenty of empty houses.)
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 03, 2009 at 02:48 PM
Be a little more fair..
1. "I am not selling anything"
No, but you are selling your agendas.. it is clear your attack on Arizona helps fly your flag for water conservation, stopping sprawl and abating global warming.
2. "I am not one of the boobs from the Midwest or inland California"
No, but you are basing much of your rhetoric on a feeling of loss. A loss of the place you grew up in. Your nostalgia can blind you as much as it enlightens you.
3. "I am not a member of the Real Estate Industrial Complex"
No, but that machine killed what you love and hold dear.. You judgment may not always be unbiased.
4. "I am a mean, mean man"
No, you are passionate and not afraid to speak your mind. Admirable qualities, not meanness.
Posted by: Derek Neighbors | October 12, 2009 at 06:26 PM
Bla Bla Bla bullshit.
Lets look at things in the proper tense.
Arizona is a crooked piece of shit that can hardly sustain itself.
Its a lie of a western storefront,
real from the street, but when you go around back you see 2x4`s propping it up.
The people here act like your typical person on vacation.Loud ignorant and waiting for any chance to screw you.
The whole place is as fake and generic as the rich that inhabit it in the winter and spring months.
The whole state is an immigrant safehouse full of crime and drugs.
If your a rich jerk you can live here.
If you are a blue collar worker you are subject to all the negetive things no matter how much you spend to get away from the bullshit.
Posted by: Fuck Arizona | November 07, 2010 at 08:57 PM
Why the hell do you hate Arizona?
One word: Republicans. They have controlled the state since the early ‘60’s. Whatever Arizona has lacked or lost or is in utter disrepair all leads back to them. And they don’t care because their only concern is retaining power. If that sounds like a cliché, just consider SB-1070.
Very few people have asked the obvious: How, in the middle of the greatest recession in history, did the foremost issue facing Arizona suddenly become kicking undocumented immigrants out of the country? Only a dolt would find a correlation like, “they take our jobs,” and even the legislators supporting the bill knew that was a stretch considering there are still NO unemployed landscapers. They also knew that they lacked any authority to legislate immigration. Bottom line: The bill didn’t stand a snowballs chance in Phoenix of changing anything about immigration. Its sole purpose was to shift the focus away from the stalled local economy. Nothing more. And the great unwashed masses bought it.
The GOP is so in control of the state that when Democrats offer brief moments of clarity, it shines. Like the enormously successful recall movement against Republican Governor Evan Mecham in 1987. Or how democratically-controlled Phoenix not only created an amazing freeway system, but did so in record time. Yes, it caused the loss of some historic homes. It took my boyhood home on West Moreland. But considering the 30+ years the GOP-controlled local newspapers successfully delayed the inevitable, it could have been far worse.
Growth has been the only thing that has kept Republicans in control in Arizona. They have depended on it and now it is gone. A reasonably balanced and fair universe will make them follow it.
Posted by: Brian Garrett | July 17, 2012 at 12:59 PM
I don't hate Arizona but I loath and detest the Republican Political machine that is so tone deaf that it won't notice 100,000 people marching in front of John McCain office. The Republicans shout out "malcontents. They're just malcontents." 40 years ago 100,000 people protesting anything would have anointed Kookacracy shaking in their boots and finding places to hide the rope and pitchforks from the angry villagers.
Posted by: Gary M. Johnson | July 31, 2012 at 01:41 AM
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this column, Jon.
Posted by: Diane D'Angelo | October 24, 2012 at 08:00 AM
Soleri: come out, come out from wherever you are. We need you on the anti-BS team!
Posted by: morecleanair | October 24, 2012 at 03:39 PM
I dont think the author hates AZ at all. I too was born and raised here. I now own the house I was born and raised in. I know just as well as anyone how people are here. And they dont care. The more we clean our property, the more they dirty theirs. You try to be nice to them, they try to look up your pants or down your blouse. The merchants are just as bad. Everyone lies thru there teeth and they are very predatory. Thing is too, they can dish it but they cant take it. The second you try to stick up for yourself they make your life a living hell. We have tried to volunteer with the local community organization, we have tried to get involved with urban gardening (which we do do in our yard), we have shown extreme patience towards our neighbors who love blaring spanish baby karaoke at one oclock in the morning. These people just dont care and they will go out of there way to drag you down to there level. As the old saying goes, come on vacation, stay on probation!
Posted by: hope4future | January 07, 2013 at 02:22 PM
Bravo! We left Phoenix in 1990 because we could, and because Phoenix was starting to rival Las Vegas as a giant live-in theme park. At the time, we figured we'd retire there one day, but now Phoenix does not make our top 10 retirement list for reasons that I don't think I need explain.
It is my home town and I wish it well, but they'll have to improve without us.
Posted by: Terry Ballard | August 25, 2013 at 02:21 PM
In hindsight, Taft-Hartley and the Goldwater gang's dire threats about loss of corporate investment in a union state probably doomed all of Arizona. It simultaneously: (1) Tightened the chains on the bond-slave environment for migrant workers (2) Doomed skilled and unskilled labor alike to uncompetitive wages and (3) Ensured there would be no large gathering of the masses to affect political change. Now, I've never been a big union guy, but that lack of unions has definitely unbalanced the state far in favor of unfettered growth and history-be-damned mentality.
Mr. Rogue, I would love to read your take on those seminal 1944 right-to-work hearings that breezed right on by in the Arizona legislature.
Posted by: The Gadabout | August 25, 2013 at 04:48 PM
So refreshing to hear people with intellect speak! I going insane living with these Arizonans. Are there any support groups? Stuck here because of kids. Were are more people like you? So hard to find them.
Posted by: Jake | May 17, 2015 at 09:13 AM
Never have I heard such astute observations about Phoenix and its apparent gradual demise from systemic heart failure. I'm not a native, and early on suffered a bruised reality when my very first friend made here -- a several-generations local still living on family farm property -- turned out to be a white supremacist who was befriending a crime ring of ex-cons with the same tunnel vision mindset. So without saying a word, I merely slipped away and cut all amicable contact, only to shake my head in sheer amazement that I should be so blind. But this person never uttered a neo-Nazi or racist word -- in detriment or support. That mentally stimulating debate is lacking is a huge understatement ... and the hypocrisy that so many of these people consider themselves good Christians (as among themselves they brutally judge others and support violence and add to ignorance) is downright terrifying. That the Russell Pearces of the world ever could hold elected office is the ultimate betrayal of public trust. And living in a decidedly RED state --esp at the state legislature level-- means one must sacrifice any semblance of consumer affairs. A glaring example is that roughly $12-$18 per month in fees and taxes gets added to every landline / internet phone bill in AZ, regardless of the carrier. But just which part of the govt is responsible for handling complaints or inquiries about this type of thing?? None at all. These type of things get tossed around by the Corporation Commission or the Attorney General's office, or whoever. Just do an internet search for "Arizona Consumer Affairs" and you'll see what fails to exist here. Seems to me that the going AZ answer for any problem can be found in a "Yosemite Sam" cartoon. Just "find the varmint", bring loaded six-shooters, stomp your feet, yell "them's fightin' words!" and fire at random into the air when it is discovered that there is no avenue to maturely or in any normal adult manner approach the woes spawned by decades of oversight from an utterly useless state regime. That's why I hate Arizona and hope to someday find greener pastures and more fertile soil to plant roots (but for now will continue to learn and cringe, and remain on a mission of mercy as the family designee to look after my elderly retired parents who live here in a Del Webb development). To put it in Yosemite Sam-speak: "Oooooh I HATES that DURNED Arizon-ee government!"
Posted by: Yoppppppp | October 21, 2015 at 06:48 PM
Freak is wrong with Esther ????? She cant leave me !!
Posted by: jiwudgyedr | October 08, 2019 at 10:32 AM
shut the f r e a k up jiwudgyedr!
Posted by: Esther | October 08, 2019 at 10:34 AM