South of the border, down Charlotte way

Like Charlie Brown forever believing this time Lucy won’t snatch away the football, we Charlotteans always expect our latest civic triumph to hammer our identity deep into the national consciousness. Big banks, NBA (twice!), NFL, Final Four, NASCAR Hall of Fame….

But before Charlotte was chosen to host the next Democratic National Convention, early returns for 2011 (as so often before) hadn’t been encouraging.

When we landed the “Miracle on the Hudson” plane, for instance, the trade journal Flight International responded, “You can now add Charlotte, South Carolina, to your aviation attractions list.”

And Inside Tennis magazine reported that “Atlanta — which boasts the largest tennis-playing population in the world — comes up just short in the USTA’s Best Tennis Town competition…  narrowly finishing second behind Charlotte, S.C.

But now that Charlotte has  wooed and won the convention — deftly elbowing aside St. Louis, Cleveland and Minneapolis — surely our South of the Border days are behind us.

Surely, Congressional Quarterly this month wouldn’t refer to “an ICE operation swooping up 45 suspected gang members in and around Charlotte, S.C.

Surely, Lucy wouldn’t….