LAND OF MYSTERY

The Washington Post's David Von Drehle visits an alien world:

Early in December, with a photographer and his assistant, I drove from Nebraska, near the geographical center of the United States, to the heart of Texas -- more than 700 miles, through empty spaces and sprawling cities and all or part of four states. We headed pretty much due south, no dodging or weaving. And never did we pass within 100 miles of a county that voted for Democrat John F. Kerry in the recent election.

Scary! Von Drehle attempted to converse with the inhabitants of this curious land, who, helpfully, turned out to speak English:

We asked them about themselves, about their communities, about their votes. Some were leery of us. Several asked politely: "What are you trying to accomplish?" Others were more blunt: "What's your angle?" Another version: "What are you hoping to find?"

Having survived these encounters without being boiled in a stew, Von Drehle continued to record, Darwin-like, his findings:

Here, on the eve of the president's second inauguration, is an honest effort to set down what I saw, what I heard, what I thought and what I learned.

We're learning rather a lot about Von Drehle, aren't we? The areas he visited are mere hours from the east coast, yet he writes of them as though he's revealing secrets deciphered from hieroglyphs inside an Egyptian pyramid.

We set off from Lincoln heading west along Interstate 80 through wintry fog that blurred the landscape and erased the highway before and after us. Within our gliding cocoon the land was nothing but tawny stubble and chocolate-colored mud. Now and then a few cows half-appeared like ghosts in the gloom, huffing steam as they grazed, and the irrigation sprinklers stood idle in the fallow fields, looking like skeletons of giant wiener dogs.

Translation: "It was wet and cold. I saw cows. Sprinklers were not in use. Mud is mud-coloured."

One of the first things worth noting about the Red Sea is that people live there because they like it. (Several people proudly pointed out to me that there are no houses on the market in Waco.) This basic fact strikes wonder in some city dwellers, who live in cities because they love cities. They love the bustle, the myriad options, the surprises and the jolts and the competition. It can require a leap of imagination to perceive that there are people who seek precisely the opposite, and not just on weekends and vacations.

It shouldn't require that much of a leap. Our brave explorer next finds Paul Kern, who actually abandoned city life for rural Nebraska:

"I like being able to shout and have nobody hear me. I like to be able to throw a snowball as far as I can and not hit anybody or anything. See, I was raised in a city with houses on each side of ours just five feet away, and an alley, and a -- aw, what's the word? A curb! The inner city. My father wouldn't let me have a dog because he said it would bother the neighbors. Out here I can have a dog and a cat. In fact, I have four cats."

He volunteered this as a way of explaining why he voted for George Bush.

Oh, but there are other reasons, sinister, non-cat reasons, which Von Drehle presently lists:

I couldn't help noticing that among the people Paul Kern won't likely hit with a far-flung snowball are black people, openly gay people and people born in foreign countries.

The Washington Post, like liberal broadsheets worldwide, often complains about the gap between rich and poor and other supposedly damaging social gulfs. By those measures, Waco, Nebraska, ought to be celebrated. Instead, Von Drehle despairs over its "sameness":

Homes are all modestly scaled; on a random day near Christmas, of 62 houses for sale in the nearby city of York, only one cost more than $200,000. The stories Nebraskans hear of members of Congress struggling to live on $150,000 a year in Washington simply astound them ... I wondered if all this sameness created a pressure to conform to prevailing political views.

What a strange notion to enter Von Drehle's head. Earlier in this bewildering report, he noted that the District of Columbia, where he lives, voted 10 to 1 in favor of Kerry. If he sought "pressure to conform", he shouldn't have left home.

The whole thing runs for another several thousand stupid words.

I can see this article heading towards an Apocalypse Now-like conclusion, as Von Drehle finally reaches the Heart of Darkness to confront the Elder Bush himself. The horror ... the horror ...

I wonder how long it will be before the Diversity Enforcement Agency presses for legislation to require towns like Waco, Nebraska to entice African Americans, Latinos, gays, etc. to move there so that they are in the same proportion as in the nation as a whole.

Failure to fill the voter rolls with the correct numbers of certified victim groups will result in witholding of federal grants for all the victim-support services that Waco currently has no need for.

Christ, this sounds just like the classic Olive Garden expedition by the British twit that Lileks fisked.

I thought leftists were sophisticated. So how come whenever they travel more than 50 miles from a big city they act like a caveman with a mirror?

The Diversity Enforcement Agency is likely to be surprised.

Last fall I stopped for the night in a small town in Iowa. There was a Mexican restaurant near the motel, and I decided this would be the right thing for dinner. The host greeted me in Spanish, and I did the whole meal without speaking a word of English. In the course of that, I discovered that nobody in the restaurant was Mexican; they were largely from South America, with one cook who was Panamanian.

Here in deep-Red Texas I buy cigarettes and sundries from a consortium of Pakistanis and Afghanis, the bank clerk I normally deal with is Vietnamese, and the Chamber of Commerce is run by a Brit with a German assistant. All of them are Texans, complete with hats, boots, and belt buckles at appropriate times.

Homosexuals do tend to move to the cities, it's true. The new arrivals tend toward enforcing that, for some strange reason. But it's not that small-town America has no experience with people from other cultures; it's that the ones who move here want to assimilate, where the ones going to cities want to build little enclaves where they can repeat the mistakes of their home countries.

Von Drehle has mistaken visiting ghettoes for experience with other cultural traditions.

Regards,
Ric Locke

My cat told me to vote for Bush because all of the other cats were telling their slaves to do the same thing.

Von Drehle is getting those questions from "the natives" because they can tell by the way he phrased "Why did you vote for Chimpy McHitler?" that he already holds them in contempt.

I love that statements like "I didn't like the crush of the city, with strangers so close on every side, so I moved to a more rural area, where I can have a bit of space." invariably becomes "I left the city to get away from blacks, gays, and foreigners." by these leftist twits.

Shit, I probably had more political, religious, ethnic and gender diversity in my barracks than Von Drehle has in his newsroom

This is hilarious. What makes this jerk think he's getting truthful answers to his condescending questions? Did he go door-to-door questioning people's sexual persuasion? Did he just assume the guy with the dog and the four cats isn't gay because . . . and how does Von Drehle know the city he came from wasn't in another country or continent?

Maybe the Nebraskan profiled is really a displaced Canadian???? Did the author think he heard the interviewee mouth a couple of "hehs" ? Did he say "aboot" instead of "about" ? Telltale signs of errant denizens of the north of who swim across the St. Lawrence (it's best to do this in the summer, otherwise you're not swimming as much as ice breaking). It's a little know problem that we have these sad refugees from cradle to coffin managed care north of our borders. Those who make it across the dangerous boundary tell us that it's become so oppressive, citizens can't tell the difference between the cradle and the coffin and there simply aren't enough mental health professionals to deal with the resultant depressions because all the mental health professionals have moved to Florida to deal with people who are suffering from PEST (Post Election Stress Tremors) and to catch some rays while they're at it.

I live in a small town in Florida and there are people here from all over the country and the world. We have a full compliment of restaurants with every cuisine imaginable represented, homosexuals, people in every color the human race comes in, tons of places of worship of every possible kind, along with atheists, agnostics, bigots and obscenely fat women who wear short short and halter tops. Somehow it all works. Lucky for us we don't have to maintain the same high standards as the euroweenies. We all know that in Weenieland, all inhabitants are tall, bronzed and beautiful and hold opinions approved by the mind control board in Brussels.

God, and by that I mean a metaphor for a superior being who may or may not have made the universe and all in it and I mean no offense to those who may or may not hold opinions of a divine being different from those stated here) help us if it ever comes to that here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

We love you Aussies. It's great fun chatting with you.

So that's what a Space Cadet thinks about his visit to Earth.

Not likely to hit a minority? I've never been to farm country that wasn't 10% Mexican or more.

He might also take more one trip before he forms opinion. Also he might try in warmer weather and at slower pace.

It's a shame no one told him about the giant radioactive ants in Nevada. They're quite the sight.

And I hear there are at least two Democrats in Arizona who actually DON'T live in a college town... but the ants are easier to find.

Von Drehle is lucky he didn't get involved in any romantic adventures with the locals. It would have quickly degenerated into something like the love scene in the movie "Deliverance."

Von Drehle's text and photos will soon appear in a future issue of National Geographic between an article on lemurs and an article on recipes for whale blubber.

To get from Nebraska to the Heart of Darkn--- I mean, Texas, this twit had to pass through Oklahoma which is still Indian Country the last time I checked. Of course, they aren't foreign nationals, and all too easily overlooked by people like Von Drehle when they aren't wearing feathers and colorful costumes.

But does he also mean to say that in all that space he didn't spot one African-American, one Mexican, one Asian? Where did he sleep? What did he eat?

"I couldn't help noticing that among the people Paul Kern won't likely hit with a far-flung snowball are black people, openly gay people and people born in foreign countries."

So he's saying Nebraska should build more supermax prisons?

Interesting. I live smack in the middle of Nebraska about 50 miles from where this guy was. I work with a number of people from mexico, the bars I go to have black patrons and one night while in a nearby town, I had a couple of beers in what turned out to be a gay bar. I guess you see what you want to see.

This article sounds very much like some of the left leaning uni students I have met over the years. I was born, raised and worked on a dairyfarm it what I viewed a a diverse and warm rural community. On chatting to uni students one of the comments I received was, "your very smart for a farmer."
It is with this attitude that those on the left can argue that it is country ignorance that causes us to vote the way we do, work in the way we do and not agree with all the green ideology that is thrown at us. It is easy to to call someone else ignorant if you no nothing about their life, work or even trying to understand their opinions.

I didn't RTFA but Travis County is right in the heart of Texas and overwhelmingly voted for Kerry in '04.

I ran a check at Realtor.com on those $200,000 homes and he's pretty correct. Of course, for $200,000, you can buy a five bedroom split-level, or for less, a nice-looking home on four acres of land. Not a McMansion in sight, which I guess is what he's complaining about.

BTW, Tim, it is not "mere hours" from the coast (as in "The areas he visited are mere hours from the east coast" unless you mean the distance from Dallas to the Gulf of Mexico.

The management level at the companies I have worked for have always been dominated by women. My peers are more likely to be black or hispanic than they are to be male. Openly gay people work with us and no one is uncomfortable for it, in fact, we even had a same sex couple working in our department at the same time and they both promoted up into management while they were here. Unfortunately, this diveristy also extends into our politics, because the late October last minute "buy John Kerry bumper stickers to make everyone think he has a chance of winning" drive only took up about a dozen desks and had an equal number of us quietly chuckling and enjoying the election result all the more for it in the end.

I live in a red state and I voted for Bush.

Mr. Von Drehle, you are a fucking idiot. What are you hoping to find?

G'day Bill Peschel,

Tim is perfectly correct - if you drive at 250mph quite a few places are "mere hours from the coast".

Vroooom!!! Vroooomm!!!!!!!!!!!

This was just a loose, exploratory foray. A more comprehensive anthropology mission is in the works. Like NASA and the European space agency joined forces to explore Titan, so the BBC/PBS/NPR will soon get together to penetrate deep into the heart of the evil hate-world "America". This would actually make for a hilarious website.

I recently read "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. OK, it was writen 50 years ago but it describes Kansas small-town folk very sympathetically. You get a real sense of the inherent kindness of the people and their community spirit. I assume the Capote was from some big city (New York?), so it shows that some urbanites can write a fair and decent account of middle America... Or maybe in the following 50 years red-staters have morphed into foreigner/gay/black-hating bigots and this Von Drehle is spot on. Nah. He's just a fool.

Sergio, that's a great idea. Run with it.

Von Drehle is probably so shell shocked that the furthest west he will ever venture again is somewhere outside the I-495 Beltway in Washington. However, his string will run out way before he gets to West Virginia.

Andrew,

Capote would eventually move to New York and eventually become the very model of a Studio 54 denizen. But long before that, he grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, a neighbor of Harper Lee, who would later write To Kill A Mockingbird, before she accompanied him to Kansas to research In Cold Blood--which wasn't written 50 years ago, only 40.

But if you had told LBJ or JFK, the Democrats' two presidents from that decade, how their fellow party members would react to losing presidential elections, they would have laughed out-loud.

It really illustrates how far to the left, and in doing so, how far out of touch their party has become with middle America.

I'm always a little puzzled by the red-state/blue state thing. Even the red places usually have a smattering of blues, and vise-versa. Anyone who can claim they drove 700 miles without finding someone with a divergent opinion either didn't look very hard or is lying.

I have an unusual perspective on things - I'm a red guy in a very blue city in a blue state - Baltimore, MD, which went 83% for Kerry. My choice for councilperson was between a Dem and a Green - no Republican. If I exist in Baltimore, I imagine some Kerry fans exist in Texas and Nebraska.

Interesting response to this article, I think.

First off, let me say FWIW that I am more or less predisposed to agree with critiques like the one above. It's not uncommon for papers like the Post to print slanderous and condescending articles about those of us from the heartland, and bloggers are more-or-less the only groups willing to provide alternative viewpoints.

That said, in this case I'm not sure it is entirely necessary. I linked to both the article and this response off of Instapundit, and chose to read the article itself first. While I can't say I agree completely with Von Drehle's approach or his results, I believe he has nonetheless given this part of the country a fair shake. His quotes from locals are often relevant and heart-felt, and paint a picture of a group of people who are comfortable in their beliefs and entirely devoid of the mean-spiritness that often characterizes urban politics. Knowing the range of thoughtfulness that characterizes political awareness in the small town I grew up in, if Von Drehle wanted to slander Middle America, he I'm sure he collected enough suitable material in his travels to do so.

As to issues of diversity, well, yeah, there is more of it than he might have suggested. At the same time though, it IS relative, and compared to any major city, well, there is no comparison. Referring again to my hometown, there was both a gay scene and a minority population, but it was not easy to find either. For legitimate reasons homosexuals kept a low profile, and the migrant workers largely sequestered themselves in small satellite communities. They were there, but in each case they weren't in any sense integrated, and it would be hard to fault any outsider for not seeing them.

With these thoughts in mind, I can't help but feel that Blair's response (and some of these posts) suffer from a bit of oversensitivity to the genre. The city-slicker-in-the-sticks reportage is often silly and sometimes malicious, but this article struck me as being toothless in almost every respect.

"I can't help but feel that Blair's response (and some of these posts) suffer from a bit of oversensitivity to the genre"


Yeah, when there's a whole genre of "Let's find out what makes red-staters such weird people" articles out there, we get a little sensitive.

I'm sure Von Drehle thinks he was not slandering anyone, but he also thinks that it's fair to wonder how any one can have an opinion on anything when they don't live shoulder to shoulder with the Proper People.

All this article needs, surely, is for Von Drehle to say "Some of my best friends are res-staters" to smooth eeeeeeeverything over.

ADehus, it is precisely the diversity thing that most of us from the "red" states are sensitive to. It is because we are repeatedly painted as racist/homophobic/xenophobic doofuses too stupid to find our butts with both hands by the MSM that we have been MADE sensitive to it.

Are we oversensitive to it? Probably. But the simple fact is that most people in left-leaning countries think that we are PRECISELY what the MSM paints us to be. I lurked a thread by two university students from England who honestly believe this crap with complete conviction... they said to each other that we were too stupid to be allowed to vote, then went on to rattle off all of the very same propaganda the MSM spreads around.

Merat — Mind you, these are usually the same folks who price African-Americans and immigrants out of their neighborhoods when they "gentrify" them with their stylish metrosexual presence...

Jonah Goldberg had a good piece on 2003 about how the New York Times writes about conservatives on campus with the attitude of Diane Fossey and "Gorillas in the Mist".

As Sortelli notes in the comment above, you start seeing these sorts of articles over and over again, and it begins to get old. Especially when they come from an MSM that pays lip service to "diversity" even as they continually write how weird those nutty red staters are.

"Sacre bleu! Those red-state hicks are media-savvy! When did that happen?"

Oh, probably about the same time more people out in the flyover country were reading the "New Yorker" and watching the Big Three TV channels than people in the Major Media were reading the "Podunkville Gazette" and listening to small town radio.

What a marroon... obviously never came to South Texas and ordered a breakfast taco, the food of the gods.

ADehus... an addendum to my comment.

Above, Ric Locke said: "But it's not that small-town America has no experience with people from other cultures; it's that the ones who move here want to assimilate, where the ones going to cities want to build little enclaves where they can repeat the mistakes of their home countries."

These comments are dead-on. You see, the lefties in this country (and elsewhere) have it bass-ackwards. America is NOT about "ethnic diversity". It is about ethnic fusion. It's about taking the BEST of the Old World and adding it to the group identity... and letting the problematic from the Old World fall by the wayside. It hasn't always worked out that way, but that is the thrust. This is the reason America has "no culture" according to some of the Europeans. Actually, we DO have a culture, but it is a fusion of Old World cultures rolled up into one unique identity.

andrewf,

I read an interview with Woody Allen some years back where he was asked why he seldom ventured outside Manhattan and he replied to the effect that "That's where Dick and Perry are."

(Note to others: Dick Hickock and Perry Smith being the two killers in "In Cold Blood").

Mad Anthony,

In parts of northern New York State, the choices are between the Left (Republicans) and the Right (Right To Life Party, a single issue anti-abortion group).

mamapajamas-

I agree with you (and Rick Locke) in the facts, but not necessarily the conclusions. Agreed, some assimilate faster than others, and you can make definite distinctions about assimilation trends based upon locale. But while I don't like the MSM's righteous attitude towards diversity I also don't presume to hold one approach to assimilation as superior to the other. I like it when newcomers assimilate, and I also like the interest and vibrancy of urban enclaves. No doubt, to hard partisans my attitude seems incomprehensible, but it just seems American to me- people come here from all over, and (within the limits of an unusually generous set of rules) do whatever works for them. I'm not of the opinion that policy has a tremendous amount of influence over how people choose to assimilate- some chose to seek 'their own', and some feel as if the path to their goals is best made by complete integration.

As I mentioned in my original post, I don't think Von Drehle was terribly out-of-bounds in mentioning the relative lack of diversity in the areas he traveled through. Much as I was struck by the ethnic diversity of the cities I went to (as a born and raised small-towner), I can't see why it is incorrect to acknowledge the reverse. Von Drehle didn't seem to me to imply anything was inherently wrong with the way the people he met might treat people with different backgrounds. This point is important to me, because in my experience small towns are often extremely hospitable towards minorities and newcomers. Again, given the 'genre' I can understand the inclination towards irritation, but I just don't see how this particular article actually provokes it.

When Kern throws his snowball, he will hit no bankers. He will hit no klansmen. He will not hit Dr. Milkton H. Whitestyle. I believe the point is that he likes having lots of space. But Von Drehle couldn't help noticing that Kern will not hit blacks, gays or the foreign-born. That's nobody else's problem but Von Drehle's.

ADehus: "As to issues of diversity, well, yeah, there is more of it than he might have suggested. At the same time though, it IS relative, and compared to any major city, well, there is no comparison."

Actually, I think John Rocker had a good point on the totality of possible comparisons. His was "incorrect", but he had a point.

Also, I make the following claim as virtually necessarily certain, almost a priori deriveable: there is more diversity in an uninhabited acre of the woods than there is in an acre of inhabited city structures.

Sorry, I made my case too easy for me to prove. Change that to "1000 acres of inhabited city structures."

And I would also put all of those city acres up agin' one Giant Nevada Ant, me taking the Ant.

Insufferable snob. Inner-city lefties of my acquaintance religiously frequent the same latte bars, listen to the same ABC radio, read the same Age, hold the same politically correct positions on everything from old growth forests to saintly asylum seekers and are as predictable as nightfall. And in the case of inner-city media lefties it is clear that they rarely communicate with anyone but their own. In the regional cities and towns it takes all types. And everyone is richer for it.

I appreviate the efforts of ADehus to see both sides of the issue. But I have to say my first reaction toVon Drehle's crack about no gays or minorities revealed the typical intellectual leperism that one has come to expect from the commentariat. Do these people really think that you can somehow judge a place or an institution on how many of a certain "victim" group lives there? What a lot of babyish nonsense. "Diversity" is bollocks.

Most people like Drehle love wide open spaces too, but only when they're part of a federal wilderness area and uncontaminated by the local hicks. That's why they give all that money to the Sierra Club. They think that the people who live in rural areas want to do the same thing with their homes as the people of Los Angeles and New York have done with theirs, and must be stopped so that they and their friends will have "unspoiled" places to spend two weeks a year with a professional guide.

The guy is acting like he is exploring North America with Lewis and Clark...I grew up in this Nebraska prairie and now live in purple Minnesota, unfortunately, in Minneapolis. It is easy to figure out this crowd from the east coast and cities....they fail to understand a few things: That the US was formed by people who worked their hinees off, had to keep us safe and defend this country by going to war, and who want to be left alone (along with leaving frivelous government out of their lives). Don't tell us how we need to spend all of our hard earned dollars in gov. programs that research silly things or support people way past their needs. Teach them how to be as self-reliant as possible and we will teach our families to care for others in need. We saw what happened to Russia and Europe in the 19th and 20th century---that's where we came from. We don't forget. It was so many of us that went to Vietnam and proudly served (or sent our family members) and then saw the 60s brats spit on us when we came home on the east coast. We are very discerning and can spot fakes a mile away. There is plenty of diversity here and we don't scream to the world how "diverse and open-minded" we are. Lots of us have friends who are gay and live and let live because it isn't our business until they start demanding we change traditional marriage, which we try to honor. Guys like this reporter have forgotten the plain people...never knew em, doesn't respect 'em, and never will.

Von Drehle obviously needed wide open spaces, needed room to make the big mistake. Like those embarrassing Dixie Chicks, it looks like he found it.

oh give me land, lots of land, under starry-starry skies. don't fence me in...

Does anyone get the feeling that Von Drehle revealed more about himself than he intended?

:)

Had VonDrehle actually bothered to stick around the Waco NE area for awhile, he would have found at least two cities (Crete and Schuyler) that have very sizable Hispanic populations and would have even been more surprised that the housing they live in is spacious (for a double-wide trailer!), cheap, and THEIRS. Even at $8/hr working at the smelly packing plants.

Unlike, say, most Hispanic residents in, say, the cities of the "enlightened" blue coasts:)

That's "mud-colored mud" to you, Mr. Blair.

--furious

furious_a

"coloured" is Australian/Queen's English spelling, in the same way we spell "centre" not "center".

"mud of color mud"

Here in the heart of bible belt Texas, Dallas, there are more strip joints per capita, in absolute and relative terms both, than in New York.

How many lesbians have recently been elected to county or municipal office in NYC or DC or Boston or San Fran? Dallas just elected a lesbian latina sheriff.

Merck's lawyers are trying desperately to get the Vioxx class-action suit moved from not liberal pro-consumer Maryland to hypercapitalist Houston, but the reverse.

As others have noted, most counties in Texas have more racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity than Maryland or many blue states.

Could someone please do an anthropological investigation into that neanderthal creature, homo MSMicus?

Honestly, if Von Drehle had hopped on I95 and driven two hours south he would've ran into people just like this, and a large percentage of them black and/or Hispanic to boot. Let's not forget, the East Coast from Virginia down are red states.

"...these people really think that you can somehow judge a place or an institution on how many of a certain "victim" group lives there? What a lot of babyish nonsense. "Diversity" is bollocks."

And of course none of the people that live in the country live there because they were specifically moving away from more diverse communities. C'mon. Diversity shouldn't be mandated, but it says something when someone moves to a community full of faces just like theirs. Maybe they like the slower pace, the cheap real estate, the safer streets, or maybe, just maybe, they don't like people that don't look like them. Von Drehle has no right to make the blanket assumption that red staters are bigots, but conversely redstaters have to realize that some of the image problem is self inflicted.

Junyo- I absolutely agree your post, particulary the last sentence. I am a red stater (from a very red part of Ohio) and have in the past rightfully taken offense at MSMs characterization of those of us who happen to be born somewhere west of Pittsburgh and east of SF. I just don't think that this particular article warrants that response. It is simple fact that rural areas are more homogenous than large cities, and Von Drehle pointed this out without suggesting any real bias. One might think he *insinuates* slander given the genre of his article, but it just isn't in the words that appear on the (web) page. Furthermore, if it is to be taken that Von Drehle is criticizing, he's doing it subtly and IMHO deserves a more measured response. As junyo suggests and my personal experiences confirm, neither the blue states or the red states have a monopoly on diversity, and while the 'MSM party line' says otherwise, in reality neither side has a monopoly on tolerance either.

Von Drehle should read "Diversity: The Invention of a Concept" by Peter Wood, 2003, available from Amazon et al. Diversity was born in Justice Lewis Powell's opinion in Baake v. U of California, 1978.
Diversiphiles stratify by pigment and sex, and attribute identical behavioral and cognitive features to all members of each cohort. That's Von Drehle through and through; he doesn't expect to see blacks and gays in red areas, so there aren't any!
The MSM and academics today are as ignorant and biased as never before. We've got to retake the high ground from them and fortunately are on the way.

"...redstaters have to realize that some of the image problem is self inflicted..."

Hello? I've lived in the same red state all my life, so why is it MY problem that somebody else has constructed an erroneous image of what my region is like?

"And of course none of the people that live in the country live there because they were specifically moving away from more diverse communities."

If that's what you want, you needn't leave your "urb:" Just find a nice, expensive, gated community, or a condominium with restrictive admission policies.

The coast-dwellers have always loved telling each other tall stories about the redneckery in the heartland-- it's akin to the our warning of "be careful not to get mugged" when one of us ventures off to New York. It only stops being fun when you start believing it.
(Actually, it is great that the blue-staters think it's such a wasteland out here: It keeps the housing costs down, means my morning commute takes five minutes, makes it easy to get symphony tickets, and there's no line at the Peruvian restaurant, either.)

Isn't the geographical center of the US technically in North Dakota, due to the large mass of Alaska? Thus the location of NORAD.

If Mr. Von Drehle had taken a few moments to read before going to sleep during his travels he would have figured out Texas has been settled by immigrants from many countries. There are plenty of Czech, German, and Nordic settlements around Texas and Asian communities are widespread throughout the state. That's not even mentioning the Brits and Scots that fought at the Alamo. Not even to mention the long history with Mexico. If you had done your research Mr. Von Drehle you would have discovered communities around Texas that were set up by freed slaves. But that wouldn't have fit your template.

Slightly askew of what already is an old thread, but the next time the ABC lectures you on ethnic diversity, just read the end credits of any ABC-produced show: an endless list of emmas, simons, alistairs, tamsins, rebeccas and verities, with hardly a habib, drago, mustafa, sanjay or even a luigi.

Driving 700 miles across the "Red Sea" is a big deal, yessiree. ("Red Sea" is almost as terrible as "Flyover Country," with all the laziness and condescension that that phrase implies.)

Speaking of laziness: Von Drehle needs a photographer and an assistant for this? Doesn't our urbane correspondent know how to point and shoot a damned camera? And how much assistance could our correspondent's photographer have needed, with "nothing but tawny stubble and chocolate-colored mud" to photograph.

If he'd really wanted to find the heart and soul of America's heartland, he would have struck out on his own (sort of like how Tim did last year, even braving the mean streets of Albuquerque). Traveling on an expense account, ensconced in a "gliding cocoon" with two other urbanites doesn't sound very adventuresome.

Thibaud wrote:
Here in the heart of bible belt Texas, Dallas, there are more strip joints per capita, in absolute and relative terms both, than in New York.

My sister would usually use strip joints as landmarks when giving directions to the apartment complex she was currently living at. :)

I've lived in the same red state all my life, so why is it MY problem that somebody else has constructed an erroneous image of what my region is like?

Having lived as a minority in red states most of my life I can tell you that the image isn't entirely erroneous.

      Actually, it's not quite as stupid as Tim makes it sound.

        Von Drehle is trying to understand why these people don't agree with him.  Von Drehle is handicapped by his pre-existing knowledge that on all issues of importance, he's right and those who disagree with him are wrong.  After all, learning is only possible in a state of ignorance, and Kerry voters know everything.

      But it's possible that one day Von Drehle will lose his enlitenment.  Give him points for trying.