Illinois

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(President Lincoln depiction not to scale)

Illinois is the "Land of Lincoln." (Try to top that, Indiana![1]) The preceding is a standard case of liberal deceit, as everyone knows Lincoln was born in Kentucky. Its other nickname is the Prairie State, which tends to be used less. It got its name because the roads there are so rough that they make you ill and annoyed.

Peoria is in Illinois, and it always matters how things will play there. The uniquely named Oblong is also in Illinois and calls itself "The Only Oblong."[2]

Illinois is also home to the city of Chicago, known as "the city of broad shoulders" and "America's hog butcher." Chicago is also known for a local accent that essentially inverts the Northeastern accent -- instead of dropping final Rs and using mushy vowels, Chicagoans overenunciate their consonants and jam all their vowels into the fronts of their mouths. Downstate Illinois accents generally range from a typical Midwestern accent (i.e. the first accent to come to mind when one hears the phrase "American accent", aka. general American or newscaster's English) to one that sounds Southern, depending on how far south one goes (a mix between the two often happens closer to the "border" between the two accents' ranges and it is not uncommon for people from further north to mistake it as Southern[3]). People originally from the state capital, Springfield, would probably be best described as having the former accent, though any Chicago politicians there are more likely to have their hometown's accent.

The plural of Illinoisan is Illini.

Despite the dominance of Chicago, Illinois is a leading agricultural state. It ranks second only to Iowa in the size of its corn and soybean crops though surpassing them in production of corrupt politicians. Twelve Chicago Democrats walking through a cemetery taking down names is a get out the vote rally.

Illinois holds the dubious distinction as the state where two followers of Lyndon LaRouche won major contested elections, in the Democratic primaries in 1986 for Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor. These primary victories are widely regarded as a fluke resulting from downstate Illinoisans voting against the Chicago machine candidates, as they usually do, without knowing anything about LaRouche. This sent the state party into panic where the party-endorsed candidates ran on the Solidarity Party ticket and the LaRouche followers on the Democratic Party ticket, throwing the election to the Republicans.

A point of much embarrassment for many residents is the tendency for Illinois Governors to be crooks or try to sell Senate seats (we're looking at you Rod).

[edit] Other people from Illinois

  • President Barack Obama, also originally a Senator (whose vacant seat Blagojevich tried to sell after the former ended up with a position the latter fortunately will never have)
  • Former Secretary of State and former Senator Hillary Clinton
  • Rod Blagojevich (D), Chairman of the Corruption and Hair Rights Commission
  • George Ryan (R), predecessor to the previous in the Governor's seat and an eventual federal prison cell
  • John Shimkus, anti-science Representative
  • Ferris Bueller
  • Jake and Elwood Blues
  • Abe Frohman, the Sausage King of Chicago
  • Robert Wadlow, the tallest man known (born in 1918 in Alton; due to complications he died at age 22).
  • Phyllis Schlafly, ominously responsible for progeny like Andrew and Roger

[edit] Footnotes

  1. They're trying to, with "Lincoln's Boyhood Home."
  2. When a woman from Normal, Illinois, married a man from there, the headline was "OBLONG MAN MARRIES NORMAL WOMAN."
  3. This guy has that accent and lives only slightly west of the Illinois side of the stateline between southeastern Illinois and southwestern Indiana and the accent in question was mistaken as being from the Carolinas by someone from Massachusetts during a summer vacation in that state.
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