The thing about a Midwestern politician calling people "weird," isn't just that "weird" means "anti-social" in Midwestern-ese, it's that commenting on behavior at all is a condemnation. Midwesterners turn the most neutral statements into scorching disapproval.
In Appalachia, they will come up with the more colorful, creative metaphor or simile imaginable. In the South, they will use some phrase that has 3-5 different meanings that it's legitimately used in so they have plausible deniability to tell someone else they just read the situation and usage wrong.
But Midwesterners are mostly "keep your eyes on your own paper" people. We can be helpful and kind, but for the most part, we are just not gonna comment on what you are doing for good or ill. Most of us do not take compliments any better than insults. There's a lot of tall poppy syndrome around.
So if Midwesterners comment, that comment means, "I am Noticing what you are doing, and I had damned well better Stop Noticing it right quick."
It's why "weird" means "anti-social." It means, "This stands out, and it stands out so much I'm going to have to say something despite everything in me telling me to mind my own business."
It's why you hear us say things like, "Well, that's different," and "Isn't that something," and "He's doing his best, isn't he?" and, "They're just weird." It is all said with the most skepticism possible.
"Oh dear, you have a lot of… things." The cyborg looked up. "The word is prosthetics." "So much machinery. Don't you worry you will stop being human?" "Oh, there is a line I will not cross." "What line is that?" "I will not question another person's humanity."
almost started crying at work the other day because we were hooking motors up to a truss and i overheard one of my coworkers telling the story of the trojan war to his friend and i was so tired and my feet were so sore beneath me i started to imagine i was a sailor on a merchant vessel centuries ago overhearing that very conversation and i thought about how some stories are so human they outlast all of us and i almost couldn't stand it
My morning glory doesn’t like the wind chime
Seventh Day Adventists want to be Jewish so bad but the SDA isn't ready to hear that
guy who does a cost benefit analysis that concludes killing the ceo is the most profitable opinion