{"id":49,"date":"2007-10-16T09:43:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-16T09:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=49"},"modified":"2013-12-08T15:03:31","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T20:03:31","slug":"youve-come-a-long-way-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"You’ve come a long way, Kentucky!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s amazing to see the huge progress Kentucky has made towards tolerance and diversity in just a short time. It was just a few years ago that the legislature and voters overwhelmingly approved a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Now, just a few short years later, a newspaper reports<\/a> that a legislator wants to make cornhole the official state game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Admittedly, not everyone in the state is similarly enlightened. The same story reports that there has been some objection to this designation, for fear that it will make Kentucky the “butt” of jokes. Some skeptics might even suggest that the legislator’s suggestion stems not from open-mindedness, but from cluelessness.<\/p>\n

\nSome have even suggested that the game be renamed. I think that would take all the fun out of it. I always thought that part of the game’s appeal was the naughtiness of its name. Why else would reasonably intelligent people stand around throwing beanbags at a board with a hole in it?<\/p>\n

\nOf course, as I mentioned here earlier<\/a>, there seems to be a wide variation in people’s level of awareness of cornhole and all its meanings. Although my poll didn’t get a large number of responses, the variance in the few answers I did get surprised me, especially since the respondents had presumably read the story before responding.<\/p>\n

\nIn the two years since my earlier cornhole saga, the game seems to have become more popular locally. I’m not sure how many of the recent converts completely comprehend the play on words, but apparently there’s enough confusion for occasional amusement.<\/p>\n

\nThe local smalltown weekly freebie newspaper has a columnist who writes a rambling stream of gossip each week. She frequently writes about the local cornhole tournaments and their increasing popularity. In one column, she mentioned a player who told her he learned cornhole when he was in prison. She said she thought he might be joking. She was probably right, but I’ll bet she probably didn’t completely understand the joke. If she did, she probably wouldn’t have printed it in a conservative smalltown paper.<\/p>\n

\nAside from the jokes, or confusion, over the name, it’s hard to understand why cornhole should be the official state game. Proponents of the idea seem to think that it’s unique to Kentucky. That’s hardly true. It seems to be a midwestern fad, and I think it was popular in Ohio and Indiana before it spread into Kentucky.<\/p>\n

\nIt may be true that Kentucky is unique in being the only state that wants<\/b> to be designated as “Cornhole Capital of the World.” That’s probably a title that even San Francisco or Greenwich Village wouldn’t try to take from us. Yes, we’ve come a long way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s amazing to see the huge progress Kentucky has made towards tolerance and diversity in just a short time. It was just a few years ago that the legislature and voters overwhelmingly approved a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Now, just a few short years later, a newspaper reports that a legislator wants to make… Continue reading You’ve come a long way, Kentucky!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}