I've responded to the first three now. Yes, they were bad comments. They were nowhere close to being representative of this thread, and they were all downvoted.

Some of the others, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30026680, you clearly misinterpreted. That comment isn't dissing Ohio, it's dissing a headline the commenter didn't like. Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30034705 also - the 'potato' thing was an unrelated joke that had nothing to do with Ohio.