'Indianoplace'? That's what Hillary Clinton called us
WASHINGTON — Indianoplace? Now, that hurts.
Indianapolis has done much in recent years to bolster its image — OK, create an image — with an increasingly thriving Downtown, an award-winning airport, and its penchant for hosting big-time sporting events such as, you know, that little thing they call the Super Bowl.
And, yet, Indianoplace. Yep, that’s how Hillary Clinton referred to us.
"Are you still in basketball-crazed Indianoplace?" Clinton wrote in an email to an aide in 2010, one of the many missives — or maybe we should call them diss-ives — recently released by the U.S. State Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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Suppose we could take some solace in the fact Clinton typed those words five years ago. A campaign spokesman said Clinton "has long loved the Hoosier state and still has fond memories of campaigning there in 2008." And Indiana Democratic Party spokesman Drew Anderson saw something positive in the comment. Then again, he kind of has to. She is, after all, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.
"I mean, at least she knows we are die-hard hoops fans?" Anderson tweeted.
Then again, she also is apparently hip to Indy’s not-so-hip "noplace" and "naptown" nicknames.
How unhip? The UrbanDictionary.com says "Indianoplace" is generally regarded as a derogatory name for Indianapolis. And then adds this zinger: "Comes from the evident lack of anything to do other than get drunk and watch sports and the apparent resistance of many of its inhabitants to allow culture, change, or diversity into the mix."
Clinton grew up in suburban Chicago and was an Indiana organizer for the Jimmy Carter-Walter Mondale presidential campaign in 1976. But she also got to see Indiana in its more present state when she and Barack Obama competed heavily for Hoosier delegates in the 2008 presidential primary.
She even took a shot of whiskey and drank a beer at Bronko's Restaurant and Lounge in Crown Point during that campaign.
And she was interviewed on "The Bob & Tom Show", a syndicated radio program, while driving to work with a South Bend sheet metal worker.
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At the time, she compared her campaign to the "Milan Miracle," the high school basketball team from Milan, Ind., that won the 1954 boys' state championship.
And Hoosiers repaid that effort. Clinton carried Indiana with 51 percent to Obama's 49 percent.
After Obama secured the nomination a month later, he went on to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the basketball-crazed state in more than 40 years. Whether Clinton has the opportunity to repeat that feat remains to be seen.
But a little mea culpa to the Circle City wouldn’t hurt. And, hey, at least she didn't call us Indianans.
Email Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Contact her on Twitter: @mgroppe.
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