Kentucky: Actually Not a Hotbed of Crime & Immorality
I'm from Kentucky. I still think of myself as a Kentuckian. I spend several months a year in a sense of irrational absolute expectation that the Wildcats will win the NCAA Championship. Every. Single. Time. A few dark times notwithstanding--especially in middle school--I like that place, and I feel an obligation to stand up for it against a rotten, prejudiced media conglomerate that is hell-bent on blaming Kentucky for most of the country's ills. In that spirit, I offer a few facts:
1) Rick Pitino works (worked?) for the University of Louisville at the time of his investigation by the FBI. That may be IN Kentucky, but it is NOT Kentucky. There might be a schadenfreude-ridden part of me enjoying this, but it's small. I promise.
2) We have a Hazard, Kentucky, but if there were any US Marshals there who looked like Timothy Olyphant, there would be no crime. So really, it is the fault of local law enforcement's hiring practices. The whole state has had its trouble with psychoactive substances and your general Schedule I controlled drugs, but even eastern Kentucky--where the closure of coal mines opened the door to moonshiners to expand their product line--couldn't keep more than one season of Justified on air. I'm reasonably, somewhat, mostly, kind of sure that's true.
3) I'm pretty sure the line near the end of Clueless in which Alicia Silverstone said OBVIOUSLY she didn't get married at 16 because she didn't live in Kentucky was meant as a laugh line, because the whole western Kentucky theater in which I saw it laughed out loud. Sure, we all had a cousin or a great-grandmother's neighbor's kid who got married early, but that doesn't make it a Thing. Right? Please?
4) Red and Elizabeth traveled to Kentucky in the season premier of The Blacklist to find their fugitive, but there's not any reason for that at all other than the fact that it's kind of far away from the show's setting (which might be DC or NYC; it's impossible to keep up) but still within driving distance. That is the ONLY reason. Absolutely. 100%. I promise. It could have been Ohio. Or Indiana. Or Tennessee. Yeah, let's go with Tennessee. Tennessee has problems too!!!
