I grew up in the Cincinnati area but left in 1976. First I went less than a hundred miles from where I grew up to study at the University of Kentucky. Then when I finished there, I moved east to New York, sure that I'd never want to live in Cincinnati again, or even visit it very much.
In the last few years though I've been back twice for short stays to the "Queen City" (a name with a certain irony), and I see it a little differently than when I left more than two decades ago. Not that I'm not still a harsh critic of the people there, but the place itself has a draw on me. I've been quite surprised that my visceral dislike of some aspects of Cincinnati doesn't result in an all-round hatred of the place. Perhaps that's as it should be: it's home after all.
Not that a lot of Cincinnatians would consider me a native. I was born and grew up in one of the towns directly across the river from Cincinnati but in the state of Kentucky. Newport has long been known as "Sin City" locally, because the prim citizens of Cincinnati couldn't bear to have vice in their own backyards. But they didn't want it to be too far away either, so it was pushed across the river to a sleepy and economically laggard working-class town. As a kid I thought it was normal for the green-grocer to be right across the street from the Pink Pussycat Lounge...
And there-in lies the source of so much of my tension toward Cincinnati. Many places can compete for the title, but I'm convinced that Cincinnati really is the native land of the hypocrite. Why is that?
In the mid-nineteenth century, huge waves of German immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated, and mostly Catholic, settled in Cincinnati. A local unassimilated culture thrived, much of it conducted in German until World War I. Also during these years, Cincinnati was gaining a reputation for being one of the worst governed cities in the US, but the unassimilated German population weren't running the city. Their votes were usually bought by the political machine on election day however. When the US went to war against Germany in World War I, waves of anti-German feeling swept the country, and it was just as intense in Cincinnati. By then the large German population was assimilating and the war speeded that up rather more quickly. During the twenties the city got rid of its most corrupt politicians and a new tradition of a clean and relatively honest local government was born.
I believe that during this era the seeds of the Cincinnati persona really took root and began to grow. The base was the solid Germanic principles of order, efficiency, hard-work, and one absolute right way to do things. Nurture this with the authoritarian strictures of the Catholic Church and the traditional Germanic personality transplanted to the Midwestern part of the US, and the result very quickly was the growth of an extraordinarily conservative local culture. The heyday for this without a doubt was the 1950s, when America as a whole was extremely conservative. Procter and Gamble's role can't be overlooked either. It was the biggest employer in the area, and it exuded the values of Cincinnati and 50's America: provide mass-produced consumer goods of fairly decent quality at a reasonable price marketed to the idealized American nuclear family. P&G is renowned locally and beyond for its paternalism and heavy-handed management style. The local media was heavily subsidized with P&G advertising dollars: (actually idea of "soap operas" began on local radio in the thirties.) In the early years of television, local programming was much more important than today, but hometown newspapers were even more influential. The major local paper is the Cincinnati Enquirer, slightly to the right of the of the Wall Street Journal. It's been one of the most right-wing newspapers editorially for as long as anyone can remember.
This milieu helped to form "homo cincinnaticus", if such a word can exist...who was a lower-middle class white educated in Catholic schools, employed by P&G (or a similarly structured authoritarian corporate entity--there were many), who accepted the pronouncements of the Church, the boss, and the Cincinnati Enquirer as unquestionably true,was deeply suspicious of outsiders (starting with the residents of Kentucky...and expanding outwards), with profound obsessions almost completely confined to the Cincinnati Reds and property values. Reeking from every pore of "homo Cincinnaticus" is the overpowering odor of smugness: Cincinnati is the best place in the best country on earth, and every ounce of one's being testifies to the superiority of the local way of life. The Germanic heritage of obstinancy and rigidity is most noticeable in the total aura of self-satisfaction surrounding each "homo cincinnaticus".
Fortunately it's getting a bit harder to find the typical "homo Cincinnaticus" anymore, although a Cincinnati mindset surely still exists. A large part of the population nowadays is made up of Appalachian transplants (including my own parents). There has always been a significant black community, still living mostly in segregated neighborhoods, but finally allowed to participate in local life to a degree. And outsiders have moved in, including "yuppies", who've loosened up the local scene somewhat, and small groups of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. But all these groups, who probably form the majority of the population of the metropolitan area, still could not be really considered the "real" Cincinnati. There are still hundreds of thousands of these white, working-class and lower-middle class versions of the most representative Cincinnatian of them all: Marge Schott.
To Americans she's known as the loud-mouthed vulgar owner of the Cincinnati Reds who was suspended from having anything to do with running her team for a while because she'd uttered one too many ethnic slurs on tv or within earshot of people who took offense. One of her most shocking quotes was to say on nationwide tv: "Hitler was good in the beginning but he just went too far." Her behavior is hardly unusual in Cincinnati though. I'd heard that kind of comment more than once growing up. Many locals think it's quite acceptable to mouth off about people who aren't the same as oneself, or to casually make the most offensive remarks about people who might be more liberal than the local norm. A certain amount of offensive language and descriptions is just part of ordinary conversation. People I went to high school with (some of them college graduates) still refer to blacks as "colored"...
It's all part and parcel of a culture of intolerance. That's hardly unique in the US. The country's diversity threatens many people all around America. But Cincinnati has a unique heritage which seems to intensify the uneasiness the locals have with anything unfamiliar.
Several incidents have characterized the Cincinnati mindset in recent years. There was heavy coverage nationally when the police shut down a local art museum's exhibit and arrested the director in the early nineties. "Banned in Cincinnati" made the city a national laughingstock, although a jury of locals was sensible enough not to convict the curator. Marge Schott's innappropriate behavior embarrassed the city again numerous times in the last ten years. And it wasn't really surprising when local telephone officials compliantly handed over residential telephone records of employees of P&G to management because the company suspected certain individuals of working against the corporate interest. And just to show where Cincinnati stood on the subject of gay people, there were suggestions it no longer be called "The Queen City", and instead be known as "The Blue Chip City". Fortunately that idea sank to the bottom of the Ohio River.
In Cincinnati, all these things are scandalous only because outsiders make a fuss about them. The local police and county prosecutors have a long tradition of confusing any expression of sexuality as pornographic and criminal, bigotry is far too often accepted uncritically as freedom of speech, and only wrongdoers would have something to hide on their telephone records, right?
So by way of background, it's no wonder a sensitive, intellectually-curious teen-ager just starting to realize he was gay (that was me), would run like hell to get out of a place like Cincinnati at the first opportunity. For me, going to the state university in Lexington Kentucky was liberating, in spite of being a gateway to the Deep South.
It's always been a mystery to me how politically liberals, gay people, or the intellectually-minded could possibly live in such a place. But they do! In spite of the hundreds of thousands of Marge Schotts and Queen City Archie Bunkers, Cincinnati has thousands of people who support an incredibly vital cultural scene and there's a small gay community that although it's lost far more battles than it's won, even has Gay Pride day in the city's main square. One of the oldest Jewish communities in the country has long been a voice for tolerance and culture in Cincinnati. The Reform movement of Judaism in America was born there. And Cincinnati has strong educational traditions (which unfortunately is prone to a subtle anti-intellectualism), while its public library system has got to be the absolute best in the country.
Other aspects of local life that are appealing are the fact that unlike New York, you don't need to be rich to be poor. Housing is cheap, and you get something for your money. The downtown is one of the nicest in the Midwest and getting better.The downtown's focal point: Fountain Square, is one of the nicest central plazas in any city I've visited. The most admirable legacy of Teutonic efficiency is how well-maintained public buildings are, how clean the streets are, and the high quality of repairs and workmanship in general. In all these things, New York City is a dismal failure, and the cost of bad housing, shabby maintenance and low quality workmanship of just about everything in daily life has never ceased to amaze me. I had to move away of course to appreciate the things Cincinnati does right.
Other aspects of the kind of lifestyle I like though are much more difficult to have back home. Most important is the opportunity to live easily without a car. It's possible to do that in Cincinnati, but it's not easy. And the locals are as car-obsessed as any Americans outside New York City. There's talk of building a light rail system, which might make the prospect of retiring back home in twenty years rather appealing. But Cincinnati can't seem to get over it's dependence on cars and actually build the thing. I grew up in the waning years of the non-car dependent era, and that created a real fondness for places that have a balanced transportation system. Other medium-sized cities around the country are beginning to realize that light rail is a great idea: St. Louis being the closest to Cincinnati.It loves its new line,and even a conservative place like Salt Lake City is building a light rail system.
Still, going home for good would be rather difficult, unless I further develop a reclusive personality. Cincinnati is one of the most homophobic cities in America, which perhaps makes sense because it's one of the most sexphobic cities in the country. Liberal ideas are fair game for the locally politically orthodox. The Enquirer takes special pleasure in endless campaigns to belittle anybody to the left of Pat Buchanan. The anti-abortion movement has some of its strongest adherents of verbal violence (and worse) living in the area. Nurturing friendships with beleaguered liberals locally would be mandatory to survive, along with an enormous tolerance for hypocrisy.So I don't think I'm quite ready for anything more than occasional visits to enjoy the nostalgia of home. For me it's the "Queasy City" instead of the "Queen City".
Feedback is welcome. Please send e-mail to: alphistia@hotmail.com