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The change of administration in Washington means that many talented spin doctors are circulating their resumes. It's a welcome development, because Colorado needs their talents -- our state is getting a bad image.
In the modern economy, it doesn't matter what Colorado is really like. Perception is everything. When Jerry Brown won our Democratic primary last March, the Colorado establishment feared that we'd suffer from a flaky reputation.
Colorado would be renowned as a haven for crystal-fondlers, past-life channelers, granola chompers, tree-huggers, navel-gazers and monkey-wrenchers. If this image held, respectable sorts would refuse to invest in our suburban sprawl, and our economy would collapse.
Fortunately, the truth slipped out -- we're also a state of strip miners, overgrazers, land developers, speculators and clear-cutters. So that threat was averted.
But with the passage of Amendment 2, the national perception goes another way. Now we're a state of homophobic gay-bashing narrow-minded yahoos.
People in other states will proclaim their political correctness by refusing to visit Colorado and by boycotting products made in Colorado. A Vail vacation, a Samsonite suitcase, a San Luis Valley potato or a mug of Killian's Red could become an offensive political statement, rather than a mere purchase based on prosaic matters like price, convenience and quality.
So we'll need the spin doctors to massage the public perception of Colorado. They might try one of these strategies:
· Accentuate the Positive. When bigotry and
hysteria swept the West 50 years ago, Colorado alone
welcomed the American citizens of Japanese ancestry who
were banished from the West Coast in a fit of ethnic
cleansing.
Colorado has sent an outspoken feminist to Congress for 11 terms. We just elected a Native American to the U.S. Senate. Colorado has been home to Barney Ford, Father Woody, Corky Gonzales, Big Bill Haywood and a host of other troublemakers.
Colorado has always held a lot of people who don't fit
the 1992 Republican convention definition of
Americans.
So get the word out.
· Ride the Clinton Coattails. Maybe Oklahoma once held a worse reputation than Arkansas as a domain of ignorance and poverty, but it was close. However, Arkansas is now poised for a big business boom, just because an Arkansawyer is on his way to the White House.
Electing a Coloradan won't work. We've tried. Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder and Bill Armstrong have all been touted as presidential material, and nothing happened.
But we could promote Colorado as Upper Arkansas
or Arkansas del Norte.
The Arkansas River starts
just up the hill from Leadville, right under 13,897-foot
Mount Arkansas.
Along its banks, we have scenery, shacks, pollution, recreation -- an abundance of the sort of thing that the downstream state of Arkansas offers.
Near the river's source is Tennessee Pass, named for the home state of the vice-president-elect. We also have the Gore Range, Gore Creek, Gore City (absorbed into greater metropolitan Kremmling years ago, but still present on old surveys), Gore Pass -- all manner of vice-presidential nomenclature that you can't find anywhere else.
That should provide ample material for the spin doctors, and they may well concoct some entirely new twist to salvage Colorado's reputation.
But I sure hope they come up with something. I sometimes deal with editors in New York and California who happen to be homosexual. It was hard enough to sell work before, and harder times loom if they decide to boycott Colorado and quit buying from Colorado writers.
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