The late Phog Allen of Kansas University basketball fame loved to barb residents of the eastern United States with such remarks as, "The average New Yorker who has been as far west as Philadelphia tends to consider himself an original member of the Lewis and Clark expedition."
Allen was a darling of the Gotham press and always had something special to offer writers who showed up in droves when he took Jayhawk teams back there. Another of his pet verbal jabs at Eastern elitists was: "New Yorkers are taller and fairer-skinned than the Chinese but not nearly so progressive."
It would appear that many "back there" are no more enlightened now than they might have been in the 1930s and 1940s.
Mary Sanchez of Knight Ridder Newspapers recently was having some fun with the post-election views of Easterners about Middle America.
"Take this comment from a New Yorker quoted in a New York Times story about the dismay blue state people (Democratic-oriented) have about red state people (Republican-leaning)," writes Sanchez.
"They're very 1950s," one woman is quoted as saying of the Midwest. "When I go back there, I feel like I'm in a time warp."
"People who are more competitive and proficient at what they do tend to gravitate toward big cities," another Times interviewee said.
Sanchez could hardly wait to launch this verbal arrow:
"OK. Let's pass that tidbit of wisdom along to the Midwesterners who founded American Century, Hallmark, H&R Block and Sprint. Oh, and maybe send a copy to Warren Buffett up in Omaha."
Concludes Sanchez, clearly proud of what we have back here:
"The truth is, Middle America's conservative nature also makes it pretty tolerant. A belief in faith and family is practiced far more often by standing beside your faith and family. It rarely means actively standing against anyone else."
On a clear night, one can almost hear Phog Allen chuckling over his longtime assumption that they still have "a lot of ignorant beasts in the East."
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