Can David Letterman Help Us?

I think he can.

You see, yesterday I touched on the biggest image problem facing West Virginia: An unusually high number of people do not realize we are a separate state from Virginia.

Sure, negative stereotyping is a huge problem for West Virginians to deal with, but when it comes to attracting new businesses, tourists, and media that would reflect our truer identity (rather than a stereotype) people not knowing we exist as a state is a much bigger problem. If they don't know who you are, they sure as hell aren't going to come.

The issue is not so much that West Virginia needs to be rebranded (because clearly our brand hasn't stuck in the minds of many), rather West Virginia needs to be branded. When it comes to branding, making a name for yourself and your product is all important.

This is precisely where our forebears (who were wonderfully colorful) screwed the proverbial pooch. It would seem that if they intended on making a separate identity for this state from the identity of Virginia, they would've done well to leave Virginia out of the name. They didn't.

What's worse, they made us a "directional state" without having a directional opposite. North Carolina has South Carolina. They're clearly different. North Dakota has South Dakota, making it obvious that there are two Dakotas. And, like New Mexico (a state that outsiders often mistake for Mexico...go figure), we have the dubious honor of having another place's name inside our name. Since Virginia is just plain old Virginia, it has primacy. West Virginia, on the other hand, is often mistaken for the western part of Virginia, which we used to be 146 years ago.

I firmly believe that only one man can solve this problem for us: David Letterman.

David Letterman celebrates oddly named places on a regular basis (a big hello to the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska). David Letterman famously begged to have a part of the expressway around Indianapolis named after himself. Indiana wasn't so forthcoming (something about the expense of making new signs), but Schoharie (pronounced sko-hairy), New York, did name a small street after Letterman and they were rewarded with Schoharie Night, with all of the citizens of Schoharie (a small town) invited to the show in NYC.

Imagine the free branding publicity West Virginia could get from David Letterman if we took our case to him. Each night he could discuss how West Virginia has been a state for nearly 150 years, yet people still think it's a part of Virginia because Virginia was allowed back into the union without being asked to change their name to East Virginia. (Really, didn't the country at least owe us that seeing as how we severed ourselves from the mutinous South? Does loyalty not beget loyalty?) In order to cobble a name for ourselves separate from Virginia (and not going back to the old favorites of Kanawha or Trans-Allegheny—name bullets we initially dodged), we could start a movement to rename the state Letterman. Sure it would never pass a vote, but think of all the glorious David Letterman time we could suck up getting name recognition for West Virginia in her poorly named plight.

While we're at it, our state capital suffers a name recognition problem as well: Charleston is more famously a city in South Carolina. Let's kill two name recognition problems with one stone: We could move to rename Charleston "David" and that way whenever school children learned the states and capitals, they would learn about our lovely capital David, Letterman.

Of course, I'd want to see a David Letterman Day in Charleston as part of the effort, complete with parades and those wiener dog races of which we West Virginians are so fond.

I believe this is an idea whose time has come. And you?