Sticking Up for Pee-Wee

This morning NPR broadcast some story (I wasn’t listening closely) in which the reporter interviewed an overworked sheriff, and then said he and his partner have to police an area “the size of Rhode Island.”

And it struck me that this is our default measure for any type of vast space in the news: the area is always “the size of Rhode Island,” and it’s almost always un-policeable or unmanageable somehow. “Ranger Danger has to protect against poachers in an area the size of Rhode Island.” “Sheriff Yakima has to watch for illegal aliens in an area the size of Rhode Island.”

Rhode Island now is less a state than a unit of measurement. Distance is measured in miles, weight in pounds, and area in Rhode Islands. (Huge vertical distances are still measured in Statues of Liberties.) It’s bad enough to be mocked for being the teeny-tiniest state, but why should RI be dehumanized to the point of abstraction? Why should it be implied that “an area the size of Rhode Island” is wild, lawless, and bleak? Why should the state get slapped around by a lazy, cliche-spewing reporter? (And how useful is the cliche anyway? More people have visited Disney World or Manhattan Island or the Astrodome, so why not use them as a yardstick?)

Every time this stupid cliche is used, I think Rhode Island ought to charge a royalty. Maybe they could change their state motto to “As Big As Rhode Island”, but it’s not like the journos would get the joke. And they should use their royalty money to start buying up land in Massachusetts, with an eye toward annexation.