Charlotte: Like Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island’?

Say about us what you will, Democratic conventioneers — as already recalled here and here, we’re no novices in civic disparagement:

“If you all think dealing with Charlotte is difficult from up here, try being one of their neighbors.”

— Rep. Drew Saunders of Huntersville, enlisting legislative sympathy for his bill to thwart Charlotte’s road-widening plans. (2005)

“I happen to love Charlotte, which may edge out Dallas and Atlanta as home to the purest strain ever discovered of the Southern booster gene.”

— Peter Applebome, author of “Dixie Rising,” mentioning us in the very same sentence as Dallas and Atlanta! (1994)

“North Carolina, that is.”

— First Lady Laura Bush, in a White House ceremony honoring the Museum of the New South, clarifying the location of “Charlotte.” (2006)

“It was either us or a monster truck show.”

— Bette Midler at Blockbuster Pavilion, summing up the evening’s entertainment options. (1994)

“Like Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ trying to outshine the starlet Ginger.”

— Ruth Sheehan, News & Observer columnist, sighing over Raleigh’s failure to keep the CIAA basketball tournament from being wooed away by “Boosterville.” (2004)

NY Times finds North Carolina a truffling place

Hat tip to New York Times reporter and author Kim Severson for snatching from beneath the very noses of North Carolina’s MSM — not to mention its free-range bloggers and tweeters — this lively front page account of the spittin’ and litigatin’ match between rival truffle promoters Susan Rice Alexander of Southern Pines and Franklin Garland of Hillsborough.

Severson is the latest in a long line of Times reporters working out of Atlanta, including such stalwarts as future N&O editor Claude Sitton (who started the bureau in 1958), Roy Reed, B. Drummond Ayres Jr. and Peter Applebome.

Today’s “A tasty fungus…” followed Tuesday’s less appetizing “Edwards lies low….”