Austin, Texas' Travis Hill and the Great Online Rat Controversy!!


It all starts with an argument over what to do with rats...


"The Republican suggests his rat terrier relocate them to rat heaven ..."



Adapted from this source: a book review of Mr. Bill Bishop and Mr. Robert G. Cushing's collaborative effort The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like - Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Houghton Mifflin Company. 370 pages. $24.95.

All the above in the New Oxford Review. June 2009. This book review itself is by Mr. Paul Bower.

Pages 47 - 48.

"The first and most entertaining example of what Bishop and Cushing are talking about occurs early in the book, when Bishop recounts moving with his wife to the hip, fashionable section of Austin, Texas.

"Travis Hill, with its gentrified townhouses and lush parks, provides the backdrop for Bishop's first cognizant experience of the sorting of American neighborhoods.

"It all starts with an argument over what to do with rats.

"On the neighborhood's Internet message board, which Bishop refers to as often a parody of liberal precociousness, a concerned vermin - friendly citizen of Travis Hill wonders if it would be safe to relocate the rodents.

"The sole Republican in the neighborhood suggests his rat terrier relocate them to rat heaven.

"What happens after this posting is a microcosm of political segregation.

"At first, people are surprised that someone in their neighborhood could be so ghastly and intolerant of of rodent - rights.

"But the e - discussion becomes increasingly belligerent and, ultimately, the entire community asks the Republican to leave the neighborhood, citing their discomfort in living close to someone with a conflicting ideology.

"This small example serves to highlight what Bishop sees going on more and more at both ends of the political spectrum."