Parodying Massachusetts is a way to keep old resentments alive without getting into any of the inconvenient details. It also allows a pro-business, Yale-educated president with an MBA from Harvard to cast himself as anti-elitist by implying (as his Yale-educated father did in 1988 with that line about the "Harvard boutique") that Massachusetts people are a bunch of snobs. The people selling this stuff should know that in my hometown, folks get punched out for being snobs....

Massachusetts voted for McGovern over Richard Nixon -- not so much because of the Harvard boutique but because the old factory towns such as the one where I grew up remained loyal to the party of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. In any case, why, in light of history, is voting against Nixon so dishonorable? ...

That's from "The Truth About Massachusetts," a good column by The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne (a native of Fall River, Mass.). I grew up in Boston and I'm very pleased to see that this GOP crap is getting more and more Bay Staters' backs up.