Michigan, we need to have a talk.

I know we live in a confusing time right now. We have been told over the past five months that at one point we could play golf but not use golf carts. Also, Home Depot garden supplies could kill us if we bought them there but the supplies from our local hardware stores were just fine. Beginning tomorrow, we can go to the casinos in Detroit but not to a bar in the U.P. that has 70% of its sales from booze. Under 69.99999% is fine, but over 70% is a no-no.

We are tired.

Some are scared.

I’m actually just waiting for the sweet meteor of death to arrive.

Yet, we the citizens of this once proud state might be able to pull through this if our leaders in Lansing pulled their collective heads out of their derriere before the end of this year. I think we might be able to jumpstart this process by finally correcting something that went wrong in 2017 under a Republican Governor.

We are NOT Michiganders, even if a law says we are.

You see, the other day I happened to be browsing the perpetual dumpster fire known as Twitter and the term Michigander was trending. My skin immediately started to crawl being I thought more EXECUTIVE FIATS had been delivered. I was only semi pleased to find out that progressives were ranting about something in the Great Lakes State.

I decided it was finally time to write a post letting those of you who call yourself a Michigander know, that you sound like an idiot.

Respectfully, of course.

The word “gander” has meaning. According to Google it has two separate identities…

1.
a male goose.
2.
INFORMAL
a look or glance.

Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln first coined the term “Michigander” as a bit of a diss for our first Governor, Lewis Cass.  According to Wikipedia…

Michigander is considered pejorative by some due to the circumstances under which the term was coined, but others perceive no such negative connotation. The term is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, coining it when he was a Whig representative in Congress. On July 27, 1848, Lincoln made a speech against Lewis Cass, who had been a long-time governor of the Michigan Territory. Cass was then running for president on a “popular sovereignty” platform that would have let states that were conquered in the Mexican–American War decide whether to legalize slavery. Lincoln accused the Democrats of campaigning on the former President Andrew Jackson’s coattails by exaggerating their military accomplishments.

But in my hurry I was very near closing on the subject of military tales before I was done with it. There is one entire article of the sort I have not discussed yet; I mean the military tale you Democrats are now engaged in dovetailing onto the great Michigander.

Lincoln thus combined Michigan with gander to form a nickname that made Cass sound foolish like a goose.

Good ole Honest Abe would not steer you wrong, would he?

Whether or not you believe this story is irrelevant though.

Who on Earth calls themselves a male goose from Michigan other than possibly, male geese from Michigan? I might be able to buy into ‘gandering’ with all the nonsense going on in this state right now being there are a lot of us just walking around in a daze staring.  That phase will only last for so long.

I hope.

I know that in 2017 when the former Michigan Governor signed a bunch of laws for historical markers, he made “Michigander” the official nickname for the state according to the Detroit News. That act just reaffirms for me why his ace staff of crackerjack aides was lost on what was happening in Flint for the water debacle. If you can’t figure out what a “gander” is you have no hope of helping a city like Flint prevent the mess that occurred there.

I have tangled with those on twitter and elsewhere who have tried to correct me (the nerve) that the term Michigander means something other than what it actually means. I have explained to them that no matter how hard they try, you are actually calling yourself an ill-tempered male fowl (sexist) or akin to someone stoned at a Pink Floyd concert if you use the incorrect term, Michigander.

You will not sway me being my cause is just and virtuous. I have wrapped myself in the actual root meaning of the term Michigander and I feel quite confident that I am neither of those things from the state of Michigan.

One day maybe, but today is not that day.

Carry on my fellow citizens of Michigan. Carry on.

Thanks for coming to my Duke talk.

Amen.

If you care to discuss this with me on Twitter I will entertain all comers until your petulance bores me at Irishduke2