In my September column, “Where’s
Illinois?,” I hazarded the guess that the mental maps that Americans make of the
places they know resemble the actual map as much as the State of Illinois
budget described in campaign speeches resembles an auditor’s report.
The people who run Buzzfeed’s London office
asked their staff to try
and label
all the states on a U.S. map. The results were, uh, interesting.
One fanciful cartographer identified Ohio, Michigan and
Illinois as “Illinois” all at once, which suggests our state exists in a sort
of quantum state. Another labeled Missouri as Illinois; a third stuck us up in
Wisconsin, a fourth in Iowa, a fifth in Indiana.
Close enough for people who use meters instead of yards.
What was really insulting was the Illinoises labeled “who cares?,” “the middle
bit!!,” or “the flyover.”
One bi-national staffer nailed all 50, another got 31 right
— well done, both of you. Depressing, though, how many knew states by their
association with TV shows, although you gotta admire whoever correctly tagged
every single state with the name of a film or TV show set there for his/her knowledge of popular culture, if not geography.
One participant asked, “Could an American name all the UK’s
counties? I think not.” That seems fair. There are 83 counties plus
Greater London just in England. To be fair, the English county is not quite
analogous to a U.S. state, but I suspect that few Americans can label even the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2014.
