The Great Oklahoma Swindle Quotes

“I feel like Oklahoma is one big Dementiatown, suffering from some cerebral disease that is impeding blood flow to the brain. The steeper the declines in education spending, healthcare outcomes, and criminal justice, the more blame is placed on immigrants and the liberal media. The worse things get, the worse we sabotage ourselves.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

“I sometimes find myself lost in the paradoxes of place, race, and religion. Oklahoma seems to embody Walt Whitman's famous lines: 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

“So, where is Oklahoma? It is in America’s Heart, someone said. Well, not quite, I rebutted. If you compare the map of the continental U.S. to the human body, you would have to conclude that Oklahoma is America’s pancreas. It’s in the mid-south-central of the body, and, although it doesn’t have the poetic resonance of the heart, it serves an important function. It breaks down proteins, carbs, and fats. The pancreas is often overlooked until something terrible happens there, like a cancer-or the bombing of a federal building.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

“Finally, in moments of brutal honesty, Okies will admit that their state is a variation of Texas. This is a painful admission, to be sure. “The whole state is like a suburb of Dallas,” a fellow Tulsan told a Canadian friend. “It’s Texas-light,” someone wrote during my interminable Facebook conversation. Politically, culturally and religiously speaking, there’s a good case to be made for this assertion. Texans and Oklahomans share the same affinity for hard-right, red-meat conservative politics, and they have large populations of Southern Baptists. Western Swing is a purely Texas-Oklahoma creation of Bob Wills, who belongs to both states. The accent is pretty much the same, although a bit stronger in Texas. There’s the big role oil companies play in the states’ economies. And, of course, there’s football. Both states are football-crazed, but therein lies a complication: there is no greater sports hatred than that between the Sooners and the Longhorns.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

“Tulsans do not like stories that contradict our image of a magic city blessed by God.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

“In 2016 the starting wage at QuikTrip, an Oklahoma-owned convenience store, was higher than the starting salary for a teacher in the state’s schools.”
― Russell Cobb, The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State