Cornucopia / Cynthia Dewes
Give me a home where the buffalo roam(ed)
It seems to me the Midwest takes a lot of abuse from trendsetters on both coasts.
We who live here are pictured as the quintessential hicks, rubes and generally ignorant lower classes who inhabit mostly “red” states. So, I’m mad as heck, and I won’t take it any more!
Personally, as retribution for this phenomenon of abuse, I think a segment on “Oprah” would be helpful. She could feature violinist Joshua Bell and the Mayo Clinic, Huckleberry Finn, Benjamin Harrison and the many other stellar Midwestern people and places of which we’re all proud. This would be a Eureka! moment to let the rest of the world know just how smart and talented and altruistic we are out here.
Of course, Oprah’s Midwestern credentials may not be above suspicions, either. She’s left her rural Indiana home for a California beauty, although her television show still originates in Chicago. She talks a good down-home story, but sometimes we have to wonder if she really respects us Hoosiers and Wolverines and Gophers and other centrally located critters.
I’ll give you an example. Recently, Oprah featured a road trip across the country that she took with her girlfriend. While it was a noble idea to take a traditional auto tour to admire our beautiful and diverse land, it still seemed to feature many of the usual corny suspects in the Midwest. Their trip was saved from total boredom by meeting up with a couple of hunky cowboys farther west. But, I digress.
From the media and other sources emanating from the “perimeters” of the country, we often get the message that Midwesterners are more rural than they. To them, this seems to mean less intelligent and certainly less well educated or informed. It’s a perception that goes back to the beginnings of our country, when that last part of it was probably true.
But, that was then and this is now. We may possess more farmers, veterinarians and guys wearing feedstore-logo caps than they do on the coasts, but I’ll bet our folks know as much about solar energy or North Korean politics as the common (wo)man out there. I mean, Andrew Carnegie’s small town libraries paid off, and now we’re all savvy. Maybe not all technically talented, but savvy.
There’s a corollary opinion to the rube idea as well. It’s the notion that Midwesterners are somehow more naïve, more wholesome and less criminal than the rest. And, it’s true that popular opinion seems to place most of the Christian right in this neck of the woods.
But, as the song says, everything’s up to date in Kansas City, including sin. Having lived in the Midwest for most of my life, I can attest to the fact that divorce, sexual promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse are alive and well here, too. We can match our thieves and assaulters and perverts with the best of them!
On the other hand, we probably have more genuine respect for politically incorrect activities, such as attending church regularly, claiming Christmas as a religious holiday and often talking to and about God. It’s still a free country. And, most Midwesterners believe that real freedom comes from the correct exercise of free will.
Sometimes that’s called common sense.
(Cynthia Dewes, a member of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Greencastle, is a regular columnist for The Criterion.) †