An Accident of Geography

Last night I was lying on one of my new couches trying to find something to watch on my new TV and I came across the one of the stupidest shows I have seen in quite a while. It was a true crime story about a murdered woman in "Amish country" -- Lancaster, PA. Now, having lived in Lancaster during my four years of undergrad, I stopped to watch it for a moment. Right away I noticed that it was not actually about anyone or anything Amish, and the murder mystery in question was actually set in the largely Hispanic, working-class city of Lancaster. Which bears no actual relationship to anything Amish except that it happens to be located in Lancaster county. But the voice over kept saying stupid things like "A murder in Amish country?!" while showing scenes of rolling farmlands and Amish buggies. Then they'd cut back to the row-houses where the story actually took place. It was monumentally stupid. It held my attention for about ten minutes, as I waited for an actual Amish connection to develop. I turned it off when it became apparent that the claim to anything Amish was about as solid as Sarah Palin's claim to foreign policy experience -- i.e, an accident of geography.