Parks and Recreation has ruined Indiana.
The sitcom, which ran on NBC from 2009 to 2015, is based in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Early episodes did more to lampoon the ridiculousness of small town politics and town meeting grandstanding, and Pawnee and its residents maintain a certain degree of insanity throughout the series. But the show quickly became more character-driven, dominated in particular by two leads: Leslie Knope, who is fiercely devoted to her community and tirelessly seeks to use her position in town government to improve the city, and Ron Swanson, a libertarian pillar of non-toxic masculinity.
So why would the portrayal of such likable characters and a quirky but pleasant town be a bad thing for Indiana? Well, because the show was filmed in California. So while Indiana does have some impressive forests, the towering peaks that appear in a few episodes put something of a grandiose spin on the state's natural areas. Especially when its tallest point, Hoosier Hill, tops out at a measly 1,257 feet.
The mighty heights of Hoosier Hill (Source)
Perhaps the most aggravating thing for the purposes of this blog is that Parks and Recreation is the first thing I thought of when doing my usual association game with the state. It was a fictional city, followed by Mike Pence, Indianapolis (showing up in my head as an indistinct collection of blocky skyscrapers), Mayor Pete (rising in the polls as he is), a city full of oil tanks that Stephen King had Trashcan Man burn down in The Stand, and that crummy Indianapolis mayor I wrote about once who promised he would run all of his public works appointments by a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon first.
It's kind of a desultory selection, with the exception of Mayor Pete (who was still in college at the time the Indiana quarter was selected, and has actually been compared to lovable Parks and Recreation nerd/policy wonk Ben Wyatt). Maybe Indiana's quarter should just make their quarter mimic a basketball and be done with it. Is that what they did?
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Oh right, that car race where drivers go around in circles for 500 miles. That somehow slipped my mind.
The Indy 500 is probably the best the state could have done in terms of quarter design, to be honest. I perused the Wikipedia page for Indiana to see what sort of interesting attractions and history and whatnot that I might be overlooking. And the resounding response was, "Really not that much."
Now I know that might seem a little mean, but let's review some of the other finalists for the state quarter:
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"Indiana: Trains and boats pass us by."
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"Indiana: Iowa's not the only state with corn."
To be fair, the same argument could probably be applied to most states. I live in Connecticut, which wound up going with the storied history of the Charter Oak; of course Nutmeggers probably know what this is while everyone else sees the message as "Connecticut: We have trees."
Which, incidentally, is similar to another suggestion that was included among the Indiana finalists.
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"Indiana: We have rocks."