One great response to Friday’s post on David Brooks’ less-than-perfect-knowledge about the Midwest was a Discover Magazine blog post by Razib Khan that provided the following evidence-based map:
and for those who missed it in the comments section, here’s a story from my favorite news source:
‘Midwest’ Discovered Between East And West Coasts
“I long suspected something was there,” said Franklin Eldred, a Manhattan native and leader of the 200-man exploratory force. “I’d flown between New York and L.A. on business many times, and the unusually long duration of my flights seemed to indicate that some sort of large area was being traversed, an area of unknown composition.”
Though the Midwest territory is still largely unexplored, early reports describe a region as backwards as it is vast. “Many of the basic aspects of a civilized culture appear to be entirely absent,” said Gina Strauch, a Los Angeles-based anthropologist. “There is no theater to speak of, and their knowledge of posh restaurants is sketchy at best. Further, their agricentric lives seem to prevent them from pursuing high fashion to any degree, and, as a result, their mode of dress is largely restricted to sweatpants and sweatshirts
“We must remember that these people are not at all like us,” Conde Nast publisher and Manhattan socialite Lucille Randolph Snowdon said. “They are crude and provincial, bewildered by our tall buildings and our art galleries, our books and our coffee shops.”
6 Comments
Three comments:
1) That area in southern Florida is mostly Jewish grandmothers from Lawn Guyland.
2) Someone who works for Pepsi needs to be fired for what has happened to the South.
3) That area from Eastern Missouri to Southwest Illinois is just bizarre… I can’t think of an explanation.
I can report from a year living in Chicago that “soda-pop” was in common usage. Fusion cuisine presumably.
A major issue in my marriage is that I say pop and my wife says soda. Only the total non-consumption of this beverage by both of us has saved the marriage.
I don’t know what to think of this map. Apparently my hometown of St. Louis is an east coast elite colony? I blame Wash U.
For what it’s worth, my opinion on the Midwest’s borders are Missouri (minus the Ozarks), skipping Kentucky and moving east until Ohio. And then as far northwest as Nebraska, and as far south west as Kansas.
@AB: Yes, Chicago is interesting for its multicultural Elitist East Coast-Massive Middle dynamic. See “Chicago-style” pizza and hot dogs, cousins of foods commonly enjoyed by Greater New York Area peoples. I believe the fusion has its roots in the French and Indian War.
If American;s can deal with this major communication issue, why can’t our top federal officials, like the president focus on the need for job here, verse fighting over what to call it. It is a new job when someone is not collecting unemployment or has given up looking?
My wife calls it soda, she is a New Jersey Girl where I am a Pop guy, from the Midwest and our kids call it Soda-Pop
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