but, of course, the attention was not positive.  in this daily show clip jon stewart delivers a passionate rant against republicans for blocking a congressional bill that would’ve provided health care for 9/11 first responders.

then in an extremely half-assed attempt at researching wyoming politics, which after 1+ years here i only know to consist of the state’s adopting “cowboy ethics” as official state code, i found the following hard-hitting question posted on an online forum:

Is WY conservative or more liberal? I heard that there aren’t many abortions but there also live many atheist’s…

i heard the name “wyoming” uttered one other time on national television, also on comedy central. it was an episode of southpark where the boyz are looking out a bedroom window and one of them yells, “there’s a meteor the size of wyoming coming at us!”

wyoming is so consistently not considered.  it seems to be seen, by many,  as the lesser montana.  people ask me frequently how life is in wisconsin.  in the public eye its brokeback mountain and, sometimes, did you hear about the morgans? having come here from los angeles, from neighborhoods i see so regularly on tv shows and in commercials, i watch reality tv to see glimpses of home in the background.  because of this, when wyoming comes up it startles me.  there is no abundance of representation except through the enduring image of the american west, the cowboy. it worries me when a place, full of people who are people and lives that are lives and history that is history, gets oversimplified and seen so rarely and for all the wrong reasons.  i’m not saying that wyoming is all good.  but, its also not so bad.  most people won’t get to see it, and furthermore have no interest in hearing about it at all.

next week, i’m going to be in california. in 80 degree weather apparently.  eating burritos and walking on the beach.  and its worlds away from here. and i’ll be answering questions like, “so how’s wisconsin?”

–estella soto