Will someone please tell Atlanta to man up and stop being such a wuss?

My apologies. This blog post was going to be an epic rant calling out one of the world's most powerful and affluent cities for being stymied by 3 fingers of snow. The nexus for this rant was a diatribe from this apologist.

That's right. He called all y'all "assholes".

Instead of a rant, let me just point out a few things. (And let me disclaim that perhaps because I lived in the city for a while perchance I'm more prone to want to criticize it.)

(a) For Pete's sake slow down.

(b) Unless your streets are laser leveled, you can’t even plow 2 inches of snow. (The streets are not smooth in Missoula either, though that’s one of only about 50 reasons why our fair byways never get plowed. I think “laziness” is also a factor.) And you can make your own fancy pants sanding truck by filing a dump truck with dirt and having two guys stand back there and shovel it out. Bam! Any two-bit town manager can figure that one out.

(c) Big city people are disconnected from nature. The bigger the city, the bigger the disconnect. Hence, the issue is not that poor Atlantans don’t know to steer into the skid when sliding, it’s that they don’t consider that something like the weather can stymie their forward progress because they so seldom encounter anything that can’t be mitigated by a smart phone.

And (d) the people of Atlanta, like most people in America, are completely unable to perform even the simplest of tasks without getting into their cars. This is in part because they live in neighborhoods designed specifically to eliminate pedestrian activities; this is in part because people have consciously chosen to live stupidly absurd distances from where they work, where they shop, and where they go to school; and this is in part because performing daily functions as a pedestrian has become a quaint footnote in our development as a species. For inspiration, read the Snowed Out Atlanta Facebook page and note how many people marooned in their cars did not think they could walk for help.

Let's just go over a few points and then end today's lesson on a more positive note:

Atlanta, one of the most powerful cities in the world:

(AJC photo)

Atlanta traffic after 3 fingers of snow:

(Something I stole off Twitter)

A cool map someone put together of what it takes to close school:

(Source: http://www.reddit.com/user/atrubetskoy)

Instead, here's a photo of (sniff, sniff) my proudest moment yet as a parent: