Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Looks Like a Wayang Kulit


Every time I see a map of Texas CD-22 I say to myself, what does that remind me of? Forms like this are common after district boundaries are gerrymandered. Indeed, the term "Gerrymander" comes from a combination of the last name of a politician who drew district boundaries to the disadvantage of his political opponents, Elbridge Gerry, and the word "Salamander" which is what the outline of the tortuous district boundaries looked like.

I finally figured it out the other day when I decided to take a district boundary outline and rotate it around until it made sense to me. The final result I have posted on the right. It's a Wayang Kulit. Translated from Malay (or more correctly from the country bumpkin dialect of Malay known as Bahasa Indonesia), Wayang Kulit means roughly Leather Theater - leather being the material that they use to create the puppets. Here in the US, the term "Leather Theater" takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

But anyway, that's just my opinion, and like belly buttons, everyone's got one. So what do y'all think? Put the image on your image viewer and rotate it around if you need to. Leave a comment if you have an opinion to share.

1 comment:

Hal said...

Hmmm . . .it just occurred to me that while he was redrawing his district to look like Leather Theater, Tom was the House Majority Whip.