Kansas and Sex and the City

It may take another two years before the whole Red vs. Blue state issue gets mainstream media attention again, but in the meantime I've read Thomas Franks's book "What's the Matter with Kansas," which is an attempt to explain why so many people (e.g., a majority of Kansans) seem to vote against their own self-interest when they lean to the right.

The question is pretty interesting, after all.  Franks points out that Kansas has long been a hotbed of populism, even as it exemplifies mainstream America.  He differentiates between the "mods," devoted Republicans with which one can honest disagreements (think Bob Dole, a Kansan); and "cons," right-wing activists with whom no useful debate is possible.  The cons belong to lower socio-economic strata, are inconsistently religious, and above all deeply suspicious of the "liberal elite," the "latte-drinking, Volvo-driving," well-educated crowd that seems to make a home in (as Bush pointed out) Massachusetts.

Franks is on to something, but his analysis is less than rigorous.  It doesn't explain what changed, what the tipping point was, that moved so many Kansans so far to the right. 

This is a mystery in popular culture, as far as I'm concerned.  My best hypothesis is that these conservative Kansans are terrified by a world that is moving on just way too fast.  They may enjoy watching Sex and the City, but are also appalled by the candor of it all.

I'm using Sex and the City as an example, because it illustrates rather well the disparity.  I'm not a big fan of the show, but it seems to me above all to be about morals.  Carrie's voice over constantly raises dilemmas, posing rhetorical questions that ultimately determine the character of the personalities.  And so it is that Samantha finds true love in monogamy; Charlotte moves way beyond her WASP comfort zones; Amanda cares for her ailing mother-in-law in Brooklyn; and Carrie and Big (John) commit.  It all ends up with everyone doing the right thing.

There is so much about the show that is far removed from real life, but what is realistic is the meandering path these women take.  They do a lot of wrong things on the way, take detours through destructive relationships, get screwed and do the screwing in every sense of the word, and yet the real questions are never carnal.  They're about the complexity of human relationships.

In Kansas (so to speak), this may be too much.  They'd prefer to live in a world where the path is straight and narrow, even if nobody manages to stay on it for very long at a time.  There shouldn't be so many alternatives.  Yes, teenagers may have premarital sex, but they're not supposed to.  All the things the Sex and the City girls talk about is vaguely familiar to Kansans, but it shouldn't be discussed openly.  Too much ambiguity results, and life becomes even more messy than it already is.

This hypothesis may explain why so much of the anger is directed at the entertainment industry.  Stars with liberal convictions personify the decay and degenerate ways.  They put gay sex (and even more disturbing, gay love) into the living rooms; they make light of drugs; they treat teenage sex as a given; etc.  Susan Sarandon even has the nerve to be self-righteous in her opposition to the death penalty.

Comments

[Franko]

First, I think you are oversimplifying way too much here. People moving to the right politically in Kansas is not a local phenomenon. People are moving to the right all across the country. I haven't read the book but the title should maybe be What's the Matter with America.

Second, I am confused: Are Kansans afraid of a world that is moving too fast or are they afraid of the hyper-sexuality in Hollywood? I think these are different things, or is promoting a promiscuous or gay lifestyle in the media synonymous with progressing too fast culturally? I think you can oppose promiscuity and the gay agenda without being a hopeless rube, afraid of a world that is leaving you behind.

Remember change is not always progress.

FC

[Leif]

The book takes Kansas as an example of what is going on around America, and I use Sex and the City as an example of what appears to drive the "cons" crazy. Of course it's a simplification, but less so than the notion that Hollywood promotes a "gay lifestyle," whatever that means.

[Franko]

Interesting. To be sure Hollywood liberals and sexual content in the media (gay or otherwise) is topic that will raise the blood pressure of most cons or ultra-conservatives or born again Christians, etc. Personally, I find TV sex boring and the characters that identify themselves based on thier sexuality are also boring. Actually, real life people that identify themselves based largly on their race or sex or sexuality are uninteresting.

My point was that, there are many people that would not normally be considered "cons" who are not comfortable with the level of sexual content being shown on TV. I am thinking of partents, like myself, mostly.

[Mark Amerman]

Lief,

Statistics are not causation but there's a remarkable correlation
that emerged (actually it's probably been there for some time)
in the recent American election. If you take a state and look
at the percentage of people who are married and the number of
white children per capita then those two items correlate to
the 95% confidence level with what percentage of voters will
vote republican.

It's a consistent relation across every state in the union.

If you're married you're likely to vote Republican; if you
have children you're even more likely to vote Republican and
if you take the two together you can more or less exactly
predict the percentage of the population voting Republican.

Remarkable isn't it?

Some of the explanations you read about the differences between
the two groups, Democrats and Republicans, are self-serving
figments of someone's imagination, but this above, whatever
it means, is the real thing.