Instead Of Bemoaning Arizona's Weirdo-Quotient, We Should Be Celebrating It. By Jeff Smith INEVITABLY THE INITIAL reports of the arrest of members of the Viper Militia, who stand accused of hoarding firearms and explosives with the intent of blowing up a bunch of federal office buildings in the Phoenix area, were full of hand-wringing and tut-tutting, disclaiming and disinheriting any connection, by nature or nurture, by blood or bond with such alleged loonies, paranoids and trigger-happy outdoorspersons as these. Another black eye for Arizona, the chorus sang, in the customary minor key. As if it weren't bad enough that Timothy McVeigh and that other guy once slept in Kingman, that Ev Mecham once governed the state, that Fife Symington still, technically, does.....Will there be no end to the humiliation Arizonans must suffer because a percentage of us--say 85 to 90 percent--are twisted pinch-brains? No. And why should there be? Arizona is full of dangerous wackos. What's the big deal? It has to do with this dry heat everybody rationalizes as an acceptable thing. That, and the wide open spaces. New York City, by comparison and contrast, is clammy and crowded. It makes people neurotic and loudly obnoxious. Arizona is drier than a popcorn fart, the sun beats a flat spot in the top of your head, and you wind up psychotic and quietly menacing. Take your pick. I apprehend all this with perfect clarity. What I cannot understand is why the mainstream press reflexively responds to each new outbreak of sunstroked sensibility--such as the Vipers' plans to blow up Phoenix--as though it were a bad thing. Gee. Phoenix is rocked by huge explosions. The offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fertilizer are reduced to rubble. Why isn't everybody sobbing? Because deep down inside we think the world would not be a materially worse place (indeed might be a little bit better) if there never had been a Phoenix in the first place. And because we've never quite been able to figure out why alcohol, tobacco and firearms--the fertilizer thing was just my little joke--were thought to form a logical troika of candidates for federal anxiety and regulation. And because those of us who have reclaimed our pre-Constitutional, God-given birthright to think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable, realize that embarrassments like Fife Symington, Ev Mecham, and even this latest crew of Beavis and Butthead militiamen form Arizona's best line of defense against a horde of invading snowbirds, disaffected New Yorkers, failed Californians and New Age crystal-heads who would love to live here and enjoy our CAP water and our year-round irrigated golf courses...if it only weren't so dangerous and embarrassing to live among these, these... ...Arizonans. And you wonder why the folks in San Diego call us Zonies. They call us that because we are--zoned, from the zone, zoned in, zoned out, it doesn't matter--and we should make the best of it. Which is to wear the badge of our native weirdness proudly, bravely. Gratefully. Like garlands of garlic in Transylvania. That which makes us the butt of cruel jokes elsewhere in the English-speaking world may allow us to gather privately, in small, intimate groups--and here let us emphasize small, private and intimate--and tell our own jokes about the short-horn foreigners who used to live here, however briefly, and their futile, pathetic attempts to treat with the heat, the dry, the touched-in-the-head. Down here in Arizona's answer to Appalachia, we have been facing a crisis of popularity. Last week, for instance, in a scenario not unlike the current hit movie Independence Day, Patagonia was invaded by an army of aliens. Something on the order of 5,000 to 8,000 Tourons from Planet Phoenix and points of similar distance hit our little town to drink up all the beer, eat up all the barbecue, barf behind all the shrubbery, watch the fireworks and generally celebrate a good old-fashioned Fourth of July. The locals--at least those who weren't doing 50 percent of the annual gross sales--left town for the day. Much more love like this and there won't be any Patagonia left to love. Except for a few hardy locals who maintain a strict adherence to the local zoning codes. Like rusted-out trucks in the front yard, garbage spilling onto the ground, tires on the tin roof to keep it from blowing away. Any variation on the aluminum beer can for personal adornment and family dwelling likewise is approved. Friends of mine of comparatively recent vintage in town used to bitch to me about these old-time Patagonians...until I pointed out to them that were it not for the Dogpatchy character of the community, we would long before have been overrun and bought out by wealthy Californians searching for their next El Dorado. Or Sedona. We need to covet and keep our crazies for the treasure they are: repellent against urban and rural blight. Try them if we must. Convict them if they are guilty. But own up to them under any circumstance.

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