What I take to be a relatively new term, "Sconnie", has found its way into commercial use. Besides the image at the right, see the earlier post on Sconnie Nation, but there's also now a Sconnie Altbier, brewed in Clear Lake. (I don't have any Sconnie-wear yet, but I'll fix that soon enough.)This is an interesting thing, but it seems like you get a much clearer sense of the positive identification Wisconsinites have with the term when it shows up in headlines like this:
Progress. Sconnie Style.I just discovered that headline at Progressive Majority Wisconsin, in their post-election roundup. (The Democrats took control of the State Senate and made considerable gains in the Assembly as well.)
5 comments:
I love you posts about Sconnie! I am one of the co-founders. To give a little insight, the Sconnie Ale beer no longer exists. We actually had a trademark dispute that we successfully won over them. I appreciate your efforts to paint Sconnie as a positive term. That's what Ben and I always intended it to be - a fun term that described the Wisconsin lifestyle. Think of it as cheesehead, but more positive than that.
Dude, your Sconnie stuff totally rocks, or whatever the young kids say these days. As for my take on the term, that's just my sense of how it's used. And the comparison to cheesehead is an interesting one: Lots of people see cheesehead as a positive term for identifying with Wisconsin, but it's got this kind of goofy, over-the-top angle -- easy enough to see how. (In Dutch, kaaskop means 'cheese head' and it can be used as an insult.) Sconnie seems much more real, somehow.
But I'm bummed that I won't have a chance to taste Sconnie Ale.
I am a Wisconsin native, and have lived here all of my life. I HATE the term Sconnie. I first heard it from a bunch of friends and acquaintances that lived in the Twin Cities. I find it to be a stupid word, somehow bordering on derogatory and one that the "out of towners" use to describe us and our state. Who's really wearing that retarded shirt? All the coasties and everybody who didn't grow up here, who don't know a thing about what Wisconsinites are really about. Way to jump on the band wagon guys. That word sucks.
I was born and raised in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. We've sold the t-shirts for 2 years with 3/4 of our orders being shipped in the state of WI. A further argument could be made that even out of state orders are in fact Wisconsin natives (I know for a fact a lot are as they leave comments saying that).
Sconnie is a fun loving term and not deragatory at all. If you think drinking beer and eating cheese is a bad thing, then fine it's deragatory. I for one like those things. It's all a matter of context. I am proud to be a Sconnie.
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