I Sing The Body Eccentric

This is probably a frivolous exercise, but I think I need to do it nevertheless: I'd like to write up some lines explaining small parts of the heartland psyche. I suppose my target audience is coastal types and international readers, but welcome all. I make no claim that I am writing a comprehensive, or even extensive, expose of Fly-Overville, but I will do my best to be an honest cataloguer.

My bona fides aren't the best for this task, but better than most: born in Dallas, TX to upper-middle class family. Moved to Colorado Springs, CO, attended evangelical Christian high school. Went to college in the Midwest, but a school with snob cred in the Beltway and the Upper West Side. I worked in D.C. at the epicenter of a national election, I've knocked on doors for Assemblyperson campaigns and local Congressional races. I've been to plays on Broadway, I've gone to the woods armed with little besides firearms and alcohol (I offer cautious recommendations of both activities).

Upon reflection, its a schizoid list. I joke with people that I both scorn and love both "blue" and "red" states. I know the joy of a post-concert coffee-shop debate amongst friends. I know the thrill of getting up before sunrise to go work on a ranch or hike with friends. I enjoy chips-and-salsa-fueled Super Bowl/Wrestlemania "watch parties". I

"Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, and count."

*Whitmanmania!*

Right. Here's a few observations, with more to come over the weeks:

1.) Size matters.

I've brought up this idea several times when I get into discussions with people unfamiliar with the heartland. America is a big country. Very big. My homestate, Colorado, has a total area of 270,000 sq. km. The entire United Kingdom is 242,ooo sq. km. New Mexico is roughly the same size as Poland. Even our middle-of-the-road states, like Oklahoma, are comparable in size to places like Syria and Belarus.

America is not unique: geography, and more specifically distance, plays a role in shaping opinions and experiences. A common fallacy amongst foreigners is that, since the majority of business, politics, and culture come from New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, many Americans are directly connected or influenced by those cities. Not true.

What drives anti-coast or anti-progressive emotion in the "unwashed" areas is the suspicion, and one I share I might add, that coastal elites and international observers scorn these lands without ever travelling them. Not only do they look down upon them(us), but they don't have any interest in visiting to test their assumptions. If someone spends some time in the Midwest and then still leaves with a bad taste in his mouth, that's a fair response. Different strokes and all that. What rankles Midwesterners, however, is when a columnist who hasn't been west of Philadelphia in a decade pronounces that the reactionary instincts of the heartland voters embarrasses him amongst his international friends. Geographically, it's the same as a Dane commenting on Italian politics without actually visiting Rome.

It's actually worse than that. In each European country, there is a separate and distinct world of media. If I want to learn about current events in Italy, I can watch/read transcripts of Rai Uno or Corriere della Sera. Each of these media ventures will have the budget and manpower of a national press. If I want to learn about Colorado, I'm stuck with localized broadcasts to Denver or Colorado Springs and a few regional newspapers. Furthermore, the New York and Washington D.C. view of America is peddled daily across television sets throughout the U.S.. So while a suburban housewife from St. Louis might be aware of what Peggy Noonan (DC) and Keith Olbermann (NY) believe, there is little-to-no chance that the tv-heads know what the housewife as well.

2.) Heartlanders aren't (too) stupid.

This one is hard for some to grok. About a week ago, in the middle of the initial Palin tizzy at the GOP convention, CNN analyst John King turned to the other pundits and said (paraphrase) "This might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it's worth noting that although Sarah Palin might be new to us in the media, evangelical families in places like West Virginia have the internet too. They've known about her for a while, and for McCain to choose her was exciting to these people."

People in West Virginia indeed have the internet. People in Montana have cable television. They see the sneering, they hear the quips about Midwest misogyny and rampant racism. These facts can be grasped by the coastal elites, but this next part is harder: heartlanders oftentimes ignore the coast.

Mencken's definition of Puritanism was "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Substitute "may disagree" for "may be happy", and the coastal-Left is just as Puritanical. To them it is a shameful idea that there might be 100 million people in this country who openly disagree with the coasts. Those in the middle are much more sanguine about the situation. A man from Ohio might know that Roger Ebert thinks he's shallow or homophobic for voting for George W. Bush, but that man couldn't give two rips about what Roger Ebert thinks about anything political, just what he thought of the new Batman movie.

A lot of heartlanders have made peace with the idea that they rarely share the same worldviews as their cultural and political leaders. As long as the leaders respect the heartland's own choices, that's okay. But when the scorn begins to grow, and the antipathy starts emerging from behind the glossy commercial non-partisan veneer, it begins to grate on heartlanders. Even amongst teens (scroll down to the link to the MTV blogs.