Time out for some perspective

Look, I get it. I grew up here, too, you know.

So when an NBA video game comes out that contains a clip portraying Fort Wayne as a place where the weather stinks all the time and there's nothing to do and Indianapolis looks down on it because Indy has restaurants and malls and schools and stuff (also indoor plumbin', though the clip doesn't say that), we get all wrathy.

Yeah, it's infuriating. Yeah, it's the work of lazy hacks who don't know how to do satire -- i.e., by researching the subject so you can inject the nuggets of truth that make satire work. Whoever wrote this business clearly didn't do any such homework, because the clip, besides not being funny, is appallingly inaccurate.

This set off a predictable furor in the Fort, which (along with Indiana in general) has an inferiority complex a mile wide and fathoms deep. I was always reminded of this whenever Chicago columnist Mike Royko made sport of the Hoosier state. It used to make my relatives mad as hell, and they always wanted me to retaliate with a column of my own.

"Nah, I'm not doin' that," I'd always say.

"Why?" they'd ask.

"'Cause I think Royko's column was hilarious. And pretty much true," I'd reply.

Needless to say this response did not go over well.

Ditto with the video game thing. We can get all mad about it, but let's do this, too: Keep our eye on the ball.

Fort Wayne (and the Mad Ants) are prominently featured in a video game that sells all over the world. All. Over. The. World.

That's called publicity, folks. And there ain't no such thing as bad publicity.

As my former colleague and the dean of Fort Wayne sportswriters Justin Cohn so ably reminds us here.

Listen to the man. Because he's dead-on right.