DENVER, CO — Colorado Governor Jared Polis held an impromptu press conference Tuesday where he strongly denied longstanding claims that the Centennial State is, in fact, shaped like a rectangle.
“This is yet another baseless right-wing conspiracy,” Polis said, standing in front of a PowerPoint slide featuring a crudely drawn trapezoid. “We are not, nor have we ever been, a rectangle. Anyone saying otherwise is perpetuating harmful geographic misinformation. Colorado is actually an ‘irregular, inclusive parallelogram,’ and I encourage all Coloradans to embrace our topographic diversity.”
Polis went on to criticize “radical cartographers” for perpetuating “outdated, rigid shape narratives” in grade-school classrooms. “These maps were drawn by the same people who believe Wyoming exists,” Polis declared, pausing to sip his kombucha.
When asked if he had personally looked at a satellite image of Colorado, Polis scoffed. “You can’t trust satellites. Big Globe is manipulating the pixels.”
In unrelated remarks, the governor also clarified that Colorado is not a “sanctuary state,” that the Rockies are not mountains but “tall, optimistic hills” and that Denver International Airport is actually an “all-weather airport” that never closes.
Local geography teachers expressed frustration over the governor’s statement. “We literally teach fourth graders the state is a rectangle,” said Ms. Sheila Martin of Boulder Valley Schools. “If he keeps this up, we’ll have to start calling it the Shape Formerly Known As Colorado.”
Polis ended the briefing by announcing a new $14.7 million taxpayer-funded “Shape Re-imagination Task Force.”
“We will not rest until Colorado is officially recognized as a free-form, living, breathing polygon,” he said.
