Doug Clark: Top 10 most ridiculous lists about Spokane include the newest – ‘most normal’

Once again, the city of my paycheck has had its character assassinated by way of a malicious national internet list.

I was horrified to learn that the Spokane/Spokane Valley area had supposedly cracked the Top 10 in a lineup of the USA’s most normal places.

A kiss of death.

Everybody knows “normal” is just a code word for “b-o-r-i-n-g.” And no self-respecting community wants to be thought of that way.

This civic slap in the kisser came by way of a Washington Post story by some fancy-pants economist who supposedly based his findings on 20 demographic factors and a Ouija board.

His research proclaimed California’s El Centro as the nation’s weirdest burg with our very own Lilac Wonderland copping ninth place for most, ugh, normal.

I’ve never been to El Centro. I couldn’t find it with a map. Even so, I know we’re a lot weirder than that burg.

Come on. Just having Rachel Dolezal as a resident should’ve automatically put us atop Mount Oddball.

This is just one more reason why you can’t trust the internet, except for buying junk you don’t need on eBay.

Every day some Einstein with a laptop and census data dreams up a new list of ridiculous rankings in hopes the topic will start trending across cyberspace.

List makers know that the more locations they rattle off, the better their chances of going viral.

This is essentially the same tactic Chuck Berry used way back in the ’50s to make his song “Sweet Little Sixteen” a big hit.

Berry probably consulted a road atlas to write his lyrics.

“They’re really rockin’ Boston. Philadelphia, PA.

“Deep in the heart of Texas. And ’round the Frisco Bay.

“All over St. Louis, and down in New Orleans … ”

It paid off. Kids in all these places started buying the record before Chuck even got to the “sweet little sixteen” line.

It’s only natural to feel a connection when somebody mentions your town. But truth should count, too.

How can Spokane be so normal when just last month a different list had us as America’s 22nd-most dangerous city?

Can being dangerous be normal for a city?

Other than Fallujah or Chicago, that is.

Just two years ago we were sixth on a national list of best places to get your car swiped.

And remember that vile online Atlantic magazine story in 2013?

It claimed to use statistical analysis to speculate that the next mass shooting would “take place on February 12, 2014, in Spokane, Washington.”

See what a complete crock this stuff is?

Some years back I wrote a Gouda news story about Spokane being No. 1 in the country when it came to consuming cheese.

After writing the story I figured such a ranking would naturally propel us to the coveted title of America’s most constipated city. But apparently nobody makes lists about that subject.

This whole topic has me thinking of getting into the internet list biz. It’s time the Spokane area was represented in a more believable way, like …

• According to a national psychiatric study of delusional people, the Spokane Indians is a first-rate baseball team.
• In its annual survey on transparency, the National Window Co. has ranked Spokane Mayor David Condon’s administration as “somewhere between thick mud and crankcase oil.”
• For the 10th year running, the Chiropractic Back-Crackers League has selected “driving on Spokane streets” as America’s quickest way to throw your spine out of alignment.
• The National Coalition of Shysters has picked Spokane as the nation’s best boomtown for filing trumped-up litigation against the city.
• According to Prepster Magazine, “What high school did you go to?” is the No. 1 greeting whenever two Spokane-area people meet.
• In a national study on methane gas production, Spokane Valley City Council meetings have been awarded an A-plus rating along with Washington State University’s ag-department research on bovine flatulence.

Let the trending begin.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com