Bobo: In the Midwest, I believe, it used to be not O.K. to brag about anything. My impression is that the region was more genuinely egalitarian than the other regions, at least in the small and mid-sized cities. You didn’t want to drive around in a fancy car. You didn’t want to put on airs. I once heard a consultant give a talk on why C.E.O.s should pay their superstars much more than their average employees. Then he added, as an aside, “We’re having some trouble persuading our Midwestern clients to do this.” I thought I heard an entire ethos cracking.
Do you think I’m right that the Midwest was more socially egalitarian? Is it still? Has Midwestern culture become more like the coasts?
Gail: David, I come from the wrong side of the tracks in Cincinnati. I went back a few years ago to talk to my old girls’ high school and met some terrific kids, who were totally confident about making their way in the world as not-wealthy young women, but really worried that it wasn’t possible to get anywhere serious if you were from the west side of town. So, not necessarily.
The mythical downside: 30 or 40 years of muddying the waters have made all those hard-working stoic types as narcissistic as the coastal elites. The mythical upside: at least they’re paying the real superstars more now.
JPL
Bobo should travel the country and be forced to eat in every Applebee’s until he finds one with a salad bar.
Mark
He makes me want to sink a hatchet into his forehead.
David in NY
Gail actually worked her way up, unlike most of the nepotists and ivy-league poseurs on the right.
Mark
I was at a dinner party last year – I think everyone there came from a wealthy coastal family and attended an elite college (there were a bunch of Stanford MBAs, a couple of Harvard BAs and some Yalies.) The conversation turned to just how wonderful they thought the midwest was, and how they’d all like to visit one day.
I told them that I grew up in the midwest and that they should generally just shut their effete mouths the fuck up.
cathyx
See, Bobo knows what he’s talking about. He once drove through the midwest. Back in 1973.
BGinCHI
Generalization, how does it fucking work?
Will someone please, please write a graphic novel where Brooks is a “superhero” called Generalizer Man?
And then can he please be horribly mutilated by his arch enemy in the first installment?
Reality Check
I’m from Indiana and Brooks has no fucking idea what he’s talking about re: the midwest. Ever.
David Brooks is also the guy who thought Obama would make a great President because he had really sharp creases in his pants. David Frum let a male Senator massage his thigh for a half hour. Thomas Friedman is a closet Fascist, Ross Douthat is a younger Rick Santorum, and Maureen Dowd? Everything she has ever written goes back to her inability to get laid since about 1995. Ladies and gentlemen: this is your New York Times editorial page!
Yevgraf
Somebody should have cut the consultant up and fed him to the buzzards.
It would have been no loss to humanity.
Mudge
Every midwest town had its Big Daddy (see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). He ran a mill, a factory, a car dealership. His daughter set the tone. Egalitarian my ass. Everyone else simply wasn’t Big Daddy.
AT
To be fair Brooks did sense that everyone was on a level playing field in his visit to the midwest, all the cars in the Country Club were of a similar value, and even the workers at the club wore nice clothes. It was a 50/50 split in black and white attendance at the club as well, with 1 worker for every guest….
Jager
Geez, Mr. Brooks, I think you’re wrong. My Dad got his start in the car business in the 50’s selling Cadillacs in a midwestern town of 35,000. He sold so many Sedan DeVIlles to the local elites he put together enough money to buy his own store and happily began selling egalitarian Chevrolets to hardworking, salt of the earth folks, who didn’t like fancy cars. Cars like Impala Super Sport Coupes, Corvettes, Camaros, you know plain everday cars like that.
Baud
I can’t believe Brooks is so mistaken about something like this. He must be really embarrassed.
Special Patrol Group
Elitist Fuckhead is as Elitist Fuckhead does.
beltane
Bobo needs to visit the United States and participate in a cultural immersion program. It’s bad enough to be this ignorant of foreign countries but to be this ignorant of one’s own country is inexcusable.
Matt Mangels
I really do think the Midwest has certain cultural values that the rest of the USA could benefit from. People there, especially in the small towns, look out for each other. Here in San Francisco, for example, a girl cannot graduate high school if she’s never had an abortion. I can’t wait to get out of here and back to Peoria.
(Disclaimer: I’ve actually never been to the Midwest.)
Tom Levenson
Not to mention the fact that Bobo, as all his thundering herd of ilk do, simply doesn’t get that this vision of a midwest dominated by small towns and middle sized cities misses the fact of urbanization, you know, everywhere.
Last time I checked the city of Chicago was in the midwest. Just sayin.
Baud
@Matt Mangels: LOL. I’m scared to ask what the boys in San Fran need to do to graduate.
Special Patrol Group
This has the distinct odor of cabdriver bullshit.
cleek
@Matt Mangels:
nicely done.
hah! rubes.
Special Patrol Group
Compare and contrast:
vs.
“The coasts.”
Assholes both.
Aaron S. Veenstra
Bobo: In the Midwest
I’ve lived my whole life in the midwest; that was all I needed to read.
Anne Laurie
You’re not being fair to Collins, DougJ. (Imagine being stuck with babysitting BoBo!) Forty years ago, those “terrific kids” at her “old girls‘ high school” were taught not to aspire to anything higher than marrying the local Rising Young Man. The world has genuinely improved now that Midwestern teenagers, even the female ones, can openly admit they want more from their future than being “Mrs. Car Dealership”.
Also, she openly mocks Brooks as a whore willing to publicize any conservative whose staff will give him a wink:
The insult sails straight over BoBo’s smooth brow, but you’re supposed to be smarter than that!
schrodinger's cat
@Special Patrol Group: Isn’t it ironic considering where they both live.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
There aren’t any. They’ve all had sex changes.
Special Patrol Group
Humblebrag!
gbear
@beltane:
I’d bet money that he’s ignorant of 90% of New York too.
henrythefifth
Ugh, Bobo was on Capitol Hill today standing in the rain and tried to hail the cab I was in…I should have told the driver to hit him. Of course, I’m from the Midwest, so I would not have bragged about having asked the cabbie do so.
What a crock of shit about the Midwest, btw.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
But the cities don’t actually count. Everyone knows that the Midwest is only the midsized cities and smaller. The big cities are actually enclaves of the Coastal Elites and completely separate from Midwestern values. Also too, no true Scotsman puts sugar in his oatmeal.
Special Patrol Group
In-deed. I really despise both of those first class assholes.
Omnes Omnibus
@gbear:
@beltane: Isn’t Bobo Canadian? Or has he become a citizen? I could google it, but I am too lazy.
schrodinger's cat
@gbear: He probably lives near Washington DC, probably Bethesda or somewhere in Northern Virginia.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought that was Frum. Isn’t David Brooks from NYC or one of its suburbs.
Jager
David: Then there is the rise of Newt Gingrich to the political stratosphere. My vanity is wounded when it comes to Newt because his press secretary is the rudest man in America, at least toward me.
Newt has a staff? I thought they all quit? Brooks must have been speaking directly to Newt!
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Ahem. It does not address the citizenship issue, but still…
Chyron HR
I was born in a small town
Felt superior ’bout my small town
Beat gays to death in that small town
And sneered at coastal elites
FuzzyDude
David Brooks has an undergraduate degree in History from the University of Chicago, an institution geographically located in the Midwest, but he was born in Canada and raised in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia.
lamh35
OT. Ok, I’
Mnemosyne
@Tom Levenson:
I think Roger Moore beat me to it, but I have it on good authority from the last election that Chicago is a coastal city since Obama is a coastal elite.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Possibly a dual citizen?
lamh35
OT. Ok, I consider myself a “Modern” woman. I try my damndest not to get hung up on “gender roles”, and I’m all for a guy being okay with shoGwing their feelings but damn after seeing this picture of Boner, all I could think was “Damn! Man up dude!”.
Geez: John Boehner Bawls Through Congressional Award Ceremony
Gawd!
(another) Josh
Tom Lehrer shoutout from DougJ: cool. Nothing will ever beat “This is the story of the Herman Cain,” however.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh35: If a female politician turned on the water works as frequently as he does she wouldn’t be taken seriously.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I had forgotten that Brooks is yet another foreigner who’s absolutely convinced that he understands America better than actual Americans do.
They all think they’re de Toqueville, and they’re all so very, very wrong.
(Except Neil Gaiman, but that’s because he doesn’t seem to be under the illusion that he actually understands Americans. He likes us even though we’re totally insane and do inexplicable things.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Do you people have any idea how big the Great Lakes are? The states with significant lake frontage are, of course, Coastal. Except when they are part of the Heartland. To determine when either of these characterizations applies, please see if the behavior of the inhabitants matches that of an Evil Liberal or a Noble Conservative. It really isn’t that hard.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know, it sounds like he understands us quite well.
Zandar
It’s hard to convince folks here in Cincy to excel because there aren’t any Applebee’s salad bars in Price Hill.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: I think Bobo’s father is Canadian. Bobo himself grew up in Manhattan but probably never took the subway or mingled with the common folk in any meaningful way. Believe it or not, back when Bobo was a kid Manhattan was home to lots of ordinary middle and working class people.
Culture of Truth
Kitty Genovese was killed in New York, a coastal city. No wonder the midwest has become a greedy hellhole.
scav
Forget urbanization, somebody needs to take into account what is happening in any number of those small towns in the Midwest: Hispanics Reviving Faded Towns on the Plains. The rural might not be quite so predictable as some once counted on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Culture of Truth: Ed Gein is from central Wisconsin.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think they’re required to participate in gay orgies.
DougJ
@Anne Laurie:
Gail was good here. That’s what made this a good exchange.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Eh, that’s not so bad. Gotta start sooner or later.
West of the Cascades
It would be tempting to shoot David Brooks, but of course we shouldn’t.
RSA
See, Brooks doesn’t even have to be self-consistent. Egalitarians, in my world view, don’t need to hire fucking consultants.
Lojasmo
I live in a Midwest city of 90k, a major medical institution, and an IBM branch.
We MIGHT have five porsches running around town. As much as I despise bobo, there might be a bit of truth to this.
My doctor, for instance, drives an early nineties Toyota previa, and probably pulls down a quarter mil per year.
Dnno.
Matt Mangels
@Roger Moore: To graduate high school in SF as a male you must be uncircumcised. If you already are circumcised there’s a procedure that you can undergo, Foreskin Re-attachment Surgery (FRS). It can actually make the graduation ceremony a little awkward with all that walking if you have it done too close to the end of the year, so most guys that need it get it done at the beginning of their Senior year.
JWL
“The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way”.
“The miners came in ’49, the whores in ’51, and when they got together they made the native son”.
Origuy
@Reality Check: Did DougJ forget to change his pseudonym back?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Lojasmo: Rochester, MN?
jl
@JWL: Californication goes way back, don’t it?
jl
@Matt Mangels: That forced public nudity and promiscuous sex law in SF has certainly changed the life style, and created interesting new etiquette problems. But problems that all American innovative know how and self reliant can do attitude will surely solve.
Brooks should come out and do one of his local color stories. With pics.
fleeting expletive
I grew up in effing Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. Not that I’ve stayed there all that recently, but it’s an interesting town. Many desperately poor folk, a regular middle class, and McMansion and old-money wealth. Large minority presence, including substantial Asian, Hispanic, AA, and Indian. In fact, it may be minority majority, I’m not sure.
Anyway, I’d like to take bobo to Muskogee and show him around and take him to my barbecue place, the mall, even the Wal-Mart, and have some local folks tell him how the cow ate the cabbage, as we say in these parts.
My point is, I think bobo may be one of the most insecure persons I have ever seen, a veritable blob of don’t-hit-me-i-mean-well. probably unempressively endowed as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Plus it encourages maintaining a healthy weight and developing muscle tone.
Cassidy
Edited for accuracy.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: I hope Bobo keeps his clothes on.
fleeting expletive
ETA: probably the most populous sector would be lower middle class of all races.
The point about “my” barbecue is in reference to my ex’s explanation: “A man will change his religion before he’ll change his barbecue place”. And it’s true.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: So does his wife. Ba dum bum.
namekarB
Am I the only one that finds it odd that a girl from “the wrong side of the tracks” gets to attend a “Girls’ High School?”
Gex
@Omnes Omnibus: Dahmer was a Sconnie to.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: I blame his issues on his time at Ohio State though.
KoolEarl
@schrodinger’s cat: \\
I went to high school with Bobo in suburban Philadelphia
Omnes Omnibus
@KoolEarl: One, I am sorry. Two, has he always been like that?
Lojasmo
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Indeed. Total waste of perfectly good cornfields.
normal liberal
I’m a fifth-generation native of Illinois, and I live in one of those small cities Bobo and his ilk so often cite as all authentic and shit. I’d be happy to escort him to our local Applebee’s (I’ve never been, so two birds, one stone) and explain the error of his ways.
He would probably claim my degree from one of those elitist Eastern colleges as a disqualifier. That’s when I decoy him into the nearest cornfield (late September would be ideal) and leave him for the harvesters.
KoolEarl
@Omnes Omnibus:
I dont know and honestly dont have any dirt on Brooks. He was somebody who seemed to spent all his time in the library and was pretty anonymous socially.
Omnes Omnibus
@KoolEarl: You could make something up. No, I guess that wouldn’t be right. Stupid ethics….
PurpleGirl
@Baud: Mr Brooks can not be embarrassed. He continually and habitually repeats his errors. He has no shame.
MikeJ
@namekarB:
On the wrong side of the tracks I would assume Catholic school, which has always had low income students.
KoolEarl
@Omnes Omnibus:
His sister was a party girl..
gbear
@namekarB:
All the boys were in jail.
Shlemizel
Not that this is a surprise but that is a huge load of shit. I grew up in the mythical golden time (50s-60s) in St. Paul MN – you could not get more quintessential Midwest than that.
There was a wrong side of the tracks, Plant managers drove big Buicks & Mercs, they lived in newer homes often in the new suburbs.
What made it more egalitarian was that my factory worker old man could drive a used Buick that was only a couple years older than his boss’es. He could expect his kids to get a college education without sending everyone to the poor house, he knew his union pension and social security would allow him a dignified retirement.
GACK! I am just sick of hearing from these inflamed assholes.
Omnes Omnibus
@KoolEarl: Probably not fair to tar a perfectly reasonable party girl with an association with Bobo, even if it is true. I have always liked party girls.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Doesn’t stop Brooks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Soulectomies aren’t covered by my insurance, so I still have mine.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: He was born in Canada and his parents moved to the US when he was young. He grew up in NYC — Upper West Side, I believe. Probably doesn’t know 95% of the City. Twit.
Chris
@Mudge:
I’m a born and bred urban/suburban coastal kid, so please forgive my complete ignorance of most anything small-town related: is this still the case?
gbear
@Shlemizel: I grew up out in North St. Paul, which was at the end of the busline back then.
When I started at the U of M in 1972, tuition was $325 per quarter. I was living at home but paying my own tuition. I still had loads of money to spend on records.
aimai
Guess I wasted my time reading Methland and Nature’s Metropolis.
aimai
Culture of Truth
To be clear, Bobo also has a Kitty Genovese obsession
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Depends on the town. But everyone does know who the doctors’, lawyers’, and business execs’ kids are in school.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Culture of Truth: Is it worse than Harlan Ellison’s?
normal liberal
@Omnes Omnibus: And the ministers’ kids. Which can get interesting…
KoolEarl
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just cant come up with any anecdotes or anything on Brooks at all other than he was a Honor Roll studious type who didnt seem to socialize at all. Everybody knew or knew of his sister Nanny but not him. Maybe the lack of socialization as a youth could be part of the problem with him now.
AuroraDarc
@16 Tom Levenson: “thundering herd of ilk” is an utterly magnificent coinage. Would you like the Internet you just won plain, or [email protected]Tom Levenson:
RalfW
Here’s how shitty our American press is. In a short article about an Occupy march tomorrow in Minneapolis to call for infrastructure spending to create jobs, the Star Tribune’s reporter (“Dee DePass has been a Star Tribune business reporter since 1993, covering small business, financial institutions, manufacturing and, most recently, the economy” her blurb says) writes:
Really? We’re having a debt crisis? We’re as bad as Italy and Greece?
Lady. We’re having a manufactured deficit “crisis.” We are not having a debt crisis. For a reporter with allegedly 18 years of bidness reporting, it’s absurd to toss debt crisis so casually.
As is the whole crap argument against stimulus spending on infrastructure. But THAT surely won’t get discussed in the biz section, thank you very much.
Omnes Omnibus
@KoolEarl: Don’t sweat it. You might be repressing something horrific, so it is probably best if we just move on. I would hate to be responsible for anything surfacing that would cause nightmares.
gbear
@KoolEarl: His revenge fantasy was to become a columnist at the NYT.
Cacti
As one who grew up in the St. Louis area, I can say with certainty that Bobo’s midwest is one that only exists in his imagination.
St. Louis is segregated as shit, and has an old money white elite. The crowning social event of the year is the “Veiled Prophet” Ball, a debutante coming-out affair. It’s more recently referred to as the “VP” Ball since the original Veiled Prophet was a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Yessir, the good old egalitarian midwest.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MikeJ: And lots more Catholic schools on the west side of Cincinnati. And there’s some truth to the notion of not getting as far in this town from the west side. Thus Collins was discussing Cincinnati accurately and authentically. It’s like 2 cities – I was 29 years old before I had an actual friend from the west side of town.
David Koch
@Omnes Omnibus:
Especially when they’re partying.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@David Koch: That picture looks like it should be from The Onion.
Ohio Mom
@MikeJ: The west side of Cincinnati has traditionally been very German Catholic (it’s changing now). So yeah, Collins must have gone to the big Catholic girl’s school over there.
I don’t know how to describe the culture of the west side, other than to say they’re old fashioned and conservative in every way. The Cincinati police force has a lot of west-siders on it.
They’re not poor but they they’re not show-offy. When I first came to Cincinnati, one of my older co-workers said, “They never buy new furniture, they just get everything reupholstered” (which you know, costs just as much as buying new).
The east side of town is generally more affluent. When Nordstrom’s came to town, that’s where they put their store. But more than that, east-siders do tend to be a much more sophisticated, trendy bunch, and much more culturally diverse. I suppose some west-side girls could envy what they might think of as the glamour of the east side, but I do think it’s an exaggeration to call the west side the wrong side of the tracks.
Did that help?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you haven’t read Gaiman’s American Gods, you should. If nothing else, as a Wisconsinite you would appreciate the guest appearance of the House on the Rock in a very important scene.
(See how I managed not to call you a cheesehead? I must be feeling mellow today.)
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne:
Sade explained it all in the ’80’s: “Coast to Coast, LA to Chicago”.
Jebediah
@KoolEarl:
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like to actually go and do interviews with real people before spouting off.
Xenos
@RSA:
The whole point of compensation consultants is to give legal cover to the executives of major firms for looting the company. Maybe these mythical mid-western executives wanted to keep their companies alive for a few more decades so that they could get their dunderhead children C-class jobs in them.
Nepotism may be the one thing keeping American manufacturing alive in the 21st century.
Special Patrol Group
Since Elitist Fuckhead David Brooks is yet again working the timeless Bullshit Right Wing Small Town Authenticity Trope:
The Real America!
Asshole.
soonergrunt
@Roger Moore: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
eemom
Little ditty, ’bout Bobo and Gaaaiiillll
Two ‘murikan hacks smuggin’ it up, in the One Percent-iiiiile.
AA+ Bonds
“Not necessarily”?
In the words of Garfield these people should be drug out in the street and shot
Linnaeus
I’m glad someone brought up the urbanized aspects of the Midwest. I grew up outside of Detroit, and somehow I suspect that the idealized version of the Midwest that people who don’t know anything about the Midwest talk about never includes places like Detroit. Must be all the nonwhite people there.
And as for egalitarianism? Some of that in the Midwest has to to with socialist things like unions. Quelle horreur, as folks in what became the Midwest might have said around 1800 or so.
Linnaeus
I’m glad someone brought up the urbanized aspects of the Midwest. I grew up outside of Detroit, and somehow I suspect that the idealized version of the Midwest that people who don’t know anything about the Midwest talk about never includes places like Detroit. Must be all the nonwhite people there.
And as for egalitarianism? Some of that in the Midwest has to to with socia1ist things like unions. Quelle horreur, as folks in what became the Midwest might have said around 1800 or so.
Will
I was born and raised in Louisville, KY. What the f*ck is David Brooks talking about???
pseudonymous in nc
It’s not that BoBo’s not right: he’s not even wrong.
JenJen
@Ohio Mom: Being a Cincinnatian, I was struck by Collins’ response almost more than Bobo’s generalization game.
I don’t see nearly the divide between East and West in Cincinnati that existed in the 80’s, and it’s hard for me to believe that girls who attend Seton (that’s the school I’m guessing) were, just a few years ago by Collins’ recollection, concerned about their future simply because they live on the west side. To me, it sounds as though Collins might be interjecting her experience decades ago. To be frank, it sounds kind of ridiculous to me.
And, for the record, any Cincinnatian that thinks of the west side as “the wrong side of the tracks” doesn’t know much about Cincinnati, or didn’t get around much, and certainly hasn’t been back in awhile. I mean, spare me.
In summary, Collins at times irritates me every bit as much as Bobo.
As an aside, I consider my hometown to be about as “midwestern” as Detroit, my place of birth. Can Ohio really be considered part of the midwest?
JenJen
@Linnaeus:
Missed your comment before posting just above, but, exactly! I was born in Detroit and it’s about as midwestern as Philadelphia. I was surprised to hear Gail Collins insert Cincinnati into the conversation, which I consider about as midwestern as Detroit. When people think about the midwest, they hardly ever mention Michigan, but then, why is Ohio almost always included?
Five minutes in Youngstown would spin Bobo’s head right off.
Chris
@Linnaeus:
and
@JenJen:
Again, I can’t relate to either the Midwest or small-town America… but Bobo seems to me like that cliched tourist who when he hears about Egypt, can only picture pyramids, camels and sand dunes… then actually goes there and has his jaw fall off in astonishment when he finds big cities with cars, roads, gas stations, skyscrapers, office buildings, universities, bookstores, movie theaters, nightclubs, restaurants… GASP! What happened to these quaint people of the desert? It’s almost like they had a nineteenth and twentieth century too…
Walizonia
As someone who has lived more than 40 years in kc with a 10 year stint in the west, the biggest cultural change has been in the rise of ostentatious religiosity. We used to keep it to ourselves. Not no more.
WereBear
My mother uprooted us from her tiny town in the Midwest and left all her friends and relatives simply to give us the chance to be ourselves.
She experienced oppressive and obsessive pressure to fit in and laminate all your dreams and emotions.
I’ll always be grateful to her for that.
From her stories, it was far more King’s Row than “Norman Rockwell.”
harlana
i’m a southerner, born and bred, and i work for/with a bunch of midwesterners who i thought were smarter than me, the cracker, the rube. scratch the surface regarding the republican presidential race, however, and i found out different. David Axelrod lives near Sharon Bialik, etc. type of stuff. really, a little disappointing. Then, at some point, after i uttered “Democrats would love for Cain to be the nominee!” i figured it was time to stfu.
harlana
Bobo can take his condescending attitudes and “theories” about people of lower order and stuff them up his privileged ass.
harlana
@Shlemizel:
every single one of them should receive a jalapeno enema for Christmas
Andrew
Of course, Bobo will not connect his shilling for corporate interests to the disintegration of America’s social fabric. It will be a shame that the people have lost their values. It was so great before [insert hand wringing about Roe v. Wade and the godless left].
I would say that there’s something to the fabled Midwest egalitarian values. Provided that you are white and hetero. And yes, Ohio is in the Midwest.
MariedeGournay
I’ll say one thing. Connecticut born and bred and the first time I went to Michigan the GIANT sky nearly drove me insane.
Ohio Mom
@JenJen: Seton was my guess, too, and I thought describing it as “the girl’s school I went to” sounded pretty affected. Like it’s some sort of hoity-toity prep school instead of a, well, Catholic high school.
I also guess my description of the east-west divide shows my age. Which is about Gail Collins’.
Nutella
Midwest: Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas and some parts of neighboring states.
There are regional cultural differences but they’re vastly more complicated than anything Bobo would ever notice.
Real life example: Venture capitalists who fund IT startups routinely give equity to programmers in Silicon Valley but programmers in Chicago startups usually refuse equity and prefer competitive salary. The VC who told me this thought it was because the Chicagoans were more conservative. I think it’s because they’re less gullible.
Nutella
@Ohio Mom:
There’s another regional difference. In some parts of the country the only sex-segregated schools are the expensive private schools. In other parts of the country Catholic schools that cater to a wide range of incomes are sex-segregated so going to a girls’ school has different social class implications in different regions.
JenJen
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re right about Seton.
As to all of you insisting Ohio is in the midwest, that’s fine, but as an Ohioan, I don’t accept it. I’ve been to Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska… they don’t resemble Ohio in the slightest. Smaller population, less urban congestion and suburban sprawl, and we somehow missed out on that fabled “midwestern politeness” thing. I consider Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota to be Great Lakes States, with our own thing going on. But, if the powers that be consider a state located in the eastern third of the United States to be “the midwest” then, well, who am I to argue?