Mitten Smitten

Illustration By Maia Ruth Lee

In this fraught political climate even the normally placid Midwest is ready to boil over into conflict. It started when the Wisconsin travel board unveiled their new winter tourism campaign, which featured a Wisconsin-shaped mitten, essentially giving longtime mitten look-alike Michigan the middle finger.

We asked Dave Lorenz at Travel Michigan which state deserved the mitten designation, and he replied, “Michigan. But we understand Wisconsin’s mitten envy. They are the Cheese State. Their state looks like a big chunk of cheese. It’s no big surprise with all those cheeseheads out there. Obviously they’ve been wearing those hats way too tight if they think their state looks like a mitten.”

In a poll on Travel Michigan’s website, nearly 18,000 respondents identified Michigan as the one, true mitten. Continuing the debate on the message boards, commenter Clifford Conor wrote, “Wisconsin is retarded. They don’t even look like a mitten unless you have a retarded hand which they probably do being retarded and all.” “Dave672” kept it more concise: “Wisconsin will always be the penis.” And a guy going by “Moonpoppy” took it to another level: “Michigan is the only place where God touched the earth and his imprint remains.” Even Lisa Marshall of the Wisconsin Department of Tourism admitted, “We’re not the Mitten State. We want to be known as the Fun State.” Before things got out of hand, the states decided to call a truce, parlaying the press exposure into a clothes drive. “Call it a truce,” Dave said, “or as I like to call it—victory.”