I’ve had my work published in some of America’s top publications, including The New York Times, but there’s something special about seeing my byline for the first time in the local newspaper I delivered as a child — and in defense of my fellow West Virginians and Mountaineers.

After writing a blog post about Jay Leno’s West Virginia jokes, I asked the executive editor of The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register if he would be interested in publishing a column on the issue. He agreed. It ran in print yesterday and went online today.

Here are excerpts from the column (with one background link added by me):

For one magnificent moment after the Orange Bowl on Jan. 4, West Virginia University and the entire state of West Virginia were the talk of America. Sports fans were in awe of the Mountaineers, who set record after record in one of the greatest football games in college history.

We West Virginians should have known the hillbilly bashers wouldn’t let us bask in the glory for long, and sure enough, the predictable slam came less than 24 hours after the final whistle.

“And West Virginia beat Clemson in the Orange Bowl last night by a score of 70-33,” Jay Leno said in his “Tonight Show” monologue the day after the game. “West Virginia scored 70 points? Huh, West Virginia? They don’t score that high on their SATs.”

Leno apparently holds to the comedic philosophy that when all else fails — and the “Tonight Show” has been one big fail after another for the past two years — just tell a West Virginia joke. …

Leno hasn’t yet sunk as low as Vice President Dick Cheney, who scored a cheap laugh in 2008 by characterizing West Virginia as a state full of inbreeding rednecks. But he’s sliding toward that gutter. His latest jab alienated the West Virginians who still watch Leno and further infuriated those who long ago tuned out the “Tonight Show.” …

But that’s OK. We West Virginians don’t need the affirmation of entertainers or politicians or anyone else who finds joy in insulting us. Most Americans voted against West Virginia before the Orange Bowl, and as our Mountaineers boasted at the end of the game, most Americans were wrong.

They always are when it comes to Almost Heaven.

Read the whole column at the newspaper’s website.