The World According to Ronald Reagan

A little Cold War humor:



Via Kelso’s Corner

#485

The Ignorant View of the World

I saw this cartoonish map on BuzzFeed the other day, but had not intended to blog about it:



Since I could not determine the source of the map, I could not decide if the author was being ignorant or ironic.

But then today a friend sent this one to me, and decided I am now seeing a theme...



I think someone is trying to suggest that U.S. Americans are a bit ignorant of geography.



Tell that to Eric Yang!

Inflated Washington

Another take on Saul Steinberg’s famous 1976 New Yorker cover, The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue, an "inflated view" of Washington D.C.:



"Ruben Bolling" is the pseudonym of the author of Tom the Dancing Bug, the long running comic that appears in Salon.com. While the message is no less true today, this comic appeared in 1999!

Inflated China

Saul Steinberg’s famous 1976 New Yorker cover, The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue, has inspired yet another "inflated view":



"How China sees the world" from the March 21, 2009, issue of The Economist.

For more detail, see Strange Maps

Inflated Britain

Add this to the inflated views file.

Last month, The Earth is Square blog reminded me of this map, that I first saw on Strange Maps.

The Tory Atlas of the World (warning, details of this map are not politically correct):



You will need to click on this image to view the larger version (in order to catch all the detail).

Chad at EIS did not identify the source, however SM remembers it from a book published by the Spitting Image satirical British television program during the 1980s. This map was making farce of the Thatcher régime, and a nationalistic-right-wing-British-centric view of the world.

#352

Alphistia Inflated

As a homage to Saul Steinberg, the man who created what is arguably the most famous New Yorker cover, Tony of Alphistia has created his own "inflated view":



The original:





© The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Cover reproduced with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved.
per Sheila Schwartz, Executive Director, The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Michigan's Superior Peninsula

In his book, Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood (discussed earlier this week) Michael Trinklein discussed the proposed State of Superior. Composed of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and portions of Northern Wisconsin, this state would presumably give the attention this region deserves, but is not getting from Lansing or Madison.



While the proposal gained some traction among "Yoopers" in the 1960s and `70s, it never came to a formal vote. Although they do have their own flag:



Some residents of the U.P. have an inflated view of their region's importance (as seen in this postcard):



(See other inflated views)

Additional map postcards with views of pleasant peninsulas:







Speaking of the Keweenaw Peninsula... For those of us of a certain age, who grew up in or near Detroit, we remember TV Weatherman, Sonny Elliot, and his special recognition of the Keweenaw Peninsula... ("Right... spweeeeet!... here...") Watch this video just past the two minute mark:





As you can see, his very first weathermap of Michigan lopped off the Keweenaw, and he had to add it on... In later years he made sure his (higher-tech) weather maps always had a detachable Keweenaw. He was also famous for coining new weather terms: cloudy and cool = "clool"!

Oregon Inflated

New York, Texas, California and Alabama are not the only states with an inflated view of themselves... in this illustration from The Oregonian, the state of Oregon barely leaves room for the rest of the United States...



The Oregonian: Look out, Oregon, for a global warming land rush

The prediction caused a collective grimace among the mayors, city councilors, engineers and planners in the audience. By 2060, a Metro economist said, the seven-county Portland area could grow to 3.85 million people -- nearly double the number here now.

Thanks Katie

Inflated Views

From the New York Times, December 8, 2001: On March 29, 1976, a simple, pastel map of New York City appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Drawn from the perspective of a low-flying bird looking west from Ninth Avenue, you could see the world receding from the city: the Hudson River, New Jersey, Kansas City, then the Pacific Ocean and Japan. It was Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," a drawing reproduced and imitated countless times. Every city wanted a version of its own. Steinberg once said that if he had gotten the proper royalties, "I could have retired on this painting." This inflated view of one's own importance is not the first time such a map has been created. Here is another look at New York in relation to the rest of the country, by Daniel K. Wallingford, in 1937; A New Yorker's Idea of the United States of America:

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Cover reproduced with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved. per Sheila Schwartz, Executive Director, The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Not to be outdone, here is a view from California:



As mentioned here before, Texas is in love with its geographic shape. They also like to tell us how everything is bigger in Texas. Below are two postcards from my collection that illustrate that infatuation:





And finally, on this postcard, Alabama, for reasons unclear, have an inflated view of themselves: