So The Nation ripped us off. What did we do about it? Well, their offices are too far away to storm, so we wrote them an angry letter. I’m sure they’re trembling in their sensible shoes.

Here’s the text of the letter we just sent to the dickweeds at The Nation about “their” Urban Archipelago issue:

Letter to the Editor of The Nation Re: "Urban Archipelago” by John Nichols, June 20.

EDITOR: Hmm, urban archipelago, urban archipelago... Such a catchy phrase. It sounds familiarOH, RIGHT: It sounds familiar because we coined it last year. We weren't the first to combine those two wordsothers have used the phrase. But The Stranger was the first publication to use the phrase to describe our current political landscape. The week after the presidential election, more than seven months ago, we used the phrase as a title for and in an essay ("The Urban Archipelago: It's the Cities, Stupid,” by the Editors of The Stranger, Nov 11, 2004) that could charitably be called an "inspiration” to John Nichols's recent piece in your magazine. We're not saying Nichols didn't write a trenchant article; we're just saying we liked it better when we wrote it.

It's not surprising that Nichols didn't attribute the source of this phrase (except by way of a passive, past-perfect construction worthy of Fox News), though he told one of our readers via e-mail that "the initial draft of the piece made mention of The Stranger and several academics who have begun using the term [after it appeared in The Stranger]. In the editing process this was reduced to a shorthand reference to the growing phenomenon of using the term.”

We hope he (and you) won't mind if we make the source of this "growing phenomenon” clear to your readers. While it's true that the trend of cities embracing a progressive political identity "has begun to be referred to as an `urban archipelago,'” it's a little credulous to presume that the phrase just magically materialized, like the image of a Virgin Mary in a sliced tomato. The publication of the November 11, 2004 edition of The Stranger, better known as "the Urban Archipelago issue” (on account of the sentence "You Are a Citizen of the Urban Archipelago,” which was printed on the cover), was followed by an unprecedented blitz of national media attention. The essay was cited from The New York Times to Vanity Fair, from Salon to Drudge. It was everywhere. We even set up a special website, www.urbanarchipelago.com, so that the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hits the essay was generating didn't crash www.thestranger.com.

We got letters and e-mails from all over the countryfrom distressed urbanites writing in solidarity to rural Christians offering to pray for us while making veiled threats to our eternal soulsalongside countless requests for the cover of the issue to be printed on T-shirts, posters, and coffee mugs. It was, by a substantial margin, the most popular issue of The Stranger we have ever published. It's possible that it made a tiny dent in the consciousness of The Nation's Washington correspondent. In any event, it also explains the correspondence we've received asking how a writer for The Nation could call a cover story "Urban Archipelago,” as though the idea were his own.

Let's be frank: If all Nichols had done was swipe our phrase, we'd have kept quiet. After all, in some circles, it's still considered an honor to be cited in The Nation, with or without attribution. But consider the likenesses between your piece and ours, not just on an idea level, but on a syntactical one (The Stranger: "Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland `values' like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country... John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities.” The Nation: "...[I]t was only thanks to overwhelming majorities in urban areas that Kerry prevailed... Cities are more likely than suburbs or rural areas to be home to the people who are least comfortable in George W. Bush's America: racial minorities, gays and lesbians, immigrants, trade unionists, the working poor and the young professionals...”). You'd be angry, too.

Please don't think we don't recognize the differences between our "Urban Archipelago” and yours. Clearly, our essay was more along the lines of a manifesto, written as a passionate response to a moment of unparalleled disenfranchisement and frustration with what seemed like a humiliating personal defeat. Nichols's piece was a welcome follow-up, checking on the (impressive) progress of the ideas advanced by The Stranger so long ago. In that sense, it was reminiscent of the work our news department has been doing in the months since the original article was published. So, thanks, Nation; it's nice to know you're reading us. Next time, please call us for a direct quote.

Sincerely,
Dan Savage, Charles Mudede, Josh Feit, Erica C. Barnett, Annie Wagner, and Sean Nelson
Authors, "Urban Archipelago,” November 11, 2004.