Remember the Steinberg cartoon, a New Yorker’s view of America? It’s time for a sequel, a Leftwinger’s view of America, which would depict the country based on the geography of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” awards. This year, the activists at MacArthur selected four of the twenty-one winners from the Bay Area of California, five from New York City, two from Durham, N.C., and one each from places like Princeton, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Washington, Philadelphia, and Belmont, Massachusetts.
On the MacArthur map, Oberlin would be bigger than Chicago, Santa Monica would dwarf the rest of Los Angeles, and Texas, Florida, and other such flyover places wouldn’t exist. You can’t expect the MacArthur search committee to venture more than 25 miles from the nearest lesbian-woman-of- color-voter-registration drive.
