“Why do you people live here?”
April 2nd, 2005,On a Daily Show January 25, correspondent Rob Corddry interviewed a local official in downtown St. Paul’s Rice Park. Corddry concluded the segment by an attempt at a joke: he began shouting about the cold weather, yelling, “Why would anyone in their right mind live here? It’s f—— cold!” As Corddry went on, the official–who was taken aback, as most Daily Show interviewees are–gave a stock regional reply that was probably missed by most viewers as Corddry continued his rant: “It keeps the riff-raff out.”
Corddry’s comment was similar to one uttered by Liam Gallagher, the snide frontman for the British band Oasis, at a concert I attended at Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis in the late nineties. It was a cold winter night, and, though it was warm inside, apparently Mr. Gallagher didn’t like the weather. “Why the f— do you people live here?” he asked in between songs. I didn’t know how to take the comment–as a punk-rock insult hurled from the stage and part of the show, or as the comment of an insensitive, ignorant boob? I’ve always though of it as more of the latter, and I’ve never liked Oasis much since then. Certainly I’ve never bought another Oasis recording.