What's The Matter With Kansas - the movie - is out

[Neecy]

Reviewed in today's SF Chronicle:

Much of what we see is revealing, but I was unable to quell an occasional sense that the dice were being loaded, that the subjects were being given just enough rope to hang themselves. We're shown a family's visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky - a place tailor-made for progressive mockery - and we see footage of the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" when activists aggressively tried to shut down the Wichita abortion facility run by Dr. George Tiller (who was assassinated earlier this year, a fact not included here). The implication of these segments is that these conservative rural Christians are unsophisticated, fanatical, weird.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/01/MVUR1B7LDA.DTL&type=science

I ran out of gas yesterday about three miles outside of my town. The gas gauge on my car stopped working last month and I figured I had plenty of gas to run errands on. Oops, I was wrong.

Anyway, I'm on a rural highway in 29 degree weather and a freezing 15 mph wind. Immediately a pickup stopped next to my car and a guy about my age got out and asked if I was okay. I told him what happened and he immediately got on his cell phone to call his brother to bring out a gas can. He then stood and chatted with me while we waited. He's in the Army, is supposed to get his discharge next month, and just returned from Iraq in September. Heck of a nice guy.

Two of his brothers arrived with a full 5 gallon gas can, put it in my car, and wouldn't take a dime from me. They wished me a Happy New Year and were on their way.

Now, I'm guessing that all three are Republicans, given the demographics of my town. Perhaps all three are fundamentalist Christians. And all three were incredibly nice people.

There are religious nuts in every state in the country. I'm personally tired of the depictions of people in my state being painted as 'unsophisticated, fanatical, weird'. Thomas Frank grew up in suburban Kansas City on the Kansas side and suddenly became an expert on the 'weird' people he encountered in the rural parts of the state and painted wide swaths of people as laughable, bizarre, and ignorant (and made himself a pile of money doing so). There was 'something the matter' with them. Now this movie will just perpetrate the stereotype.

Yes, I understand the premise that poor rural folks vote against their own self-interest. But instead of focusing on economics, he reached down to the nuts and made them sound like the norm. And they aren't, not here and not in any state.

Just a bit of preemption in case people watch this movie and want to engage in predictable bashing of rural red states.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Saw it in October. Bought a copy too.

It's not like the book. Same theme but profiles several families who are far right.

It's an important film because it shows how these people who are indeed kind enough to rescue someone who ran out of gas are also so easily led politically. It also is infuriating to see how our young are so brainwashed by the likes of Phill Kline. And it talks about 1991 in Wichita and the impact those insane anti-choicers have had on our state. I cried seeing Dan Glickman on screen talking about how he was ran out of office by this fanaticism.

There is also quite a bit about that crazy preacher in Wichita and that theme park and that whole scam. The talibornagains are the clear losers in that story.

See the film. I think you'll appreciate it.

[Berry Cool]

2. Very insightful.

See, this is the problem. It's just wrong to tar entire states or entire geographic areas with the broad brush of being full of nothing but willfully ignorant and wacky fundies. To be sure, there are some areas where that kind of thinking is much easier to find than others, but it's not fair to paint the sane people there with the same brush, and you don't really win friends or influence people by insulting their origins or choice of a place to live, either.

Why do so many political insults need to be geographic?

We hate it when the conservatives toss around phrases like "the real America" and "the real Virginia" and so on to describe the places where people like them live. We need to avoid engaging in the same stereotyping. There's a reason California turned back the clock on gay marriage, and it's not just because of a bunch of outsiders invading the state with their money and efforts. It also happened because California is not the liberal monolith people sometimes like to paint it as being. Neither is any other state full of nothing but liberals or nothing but conservatives. And there are people in the country who can think just as there are people in the city who can think.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. And the truth about Kansas

is that even the far right saw the lunacy on the state school board and those maniacs were voted off the board.

It's just far too easy to invoke family values and get people excited. It's also easier to blame others for your own problems. My kid is not taking drugs because there is a family history of addiction or because he made a bad choice, it's because the media glamorizes drug use. Damn! We need a LAW to fix that!

And so it goes.

[Warpy]

5. Actually, that wasn't the point at all, as I got it.

Kansas was only one example. It could have been about Utah or Oklahoma or Nebraska or any of the midwestern/western states where good people go to bad churches and consistently vote against their own interests. The book was a study of why they do that, of how they're manipulated into it.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. good natured people unfortunately are easily manipulated

My father is the salt of the earth. If someone needs help he drops whatever he is doing to help. He is gentle and kind natured. However it is this good nature that makes him vulnerable to the churches he attends. He is poor and getting older. He can't afford to go to the doctor so he tends to beleive in faith healing. He is afraid of going to hell so when the preacher tells him you have to stop gay marriage, put prayer back in schools, and tithe 10% of your Social Security check or we're all going to hell, he tends to believe them. It's so sad too. If he only knew that his sweet, helpful nature is already enough to get him to heaven and he didn't need the approval of some preacher he would be so much better off.

[Hannah Bell]

7. yes. because their own nature is good-hearted, they don't imagine others could be

duplicitous.

[MuseRider]

8. The same people

are found in every state of the union. Broad brushes show ignorance as well and their use is prevalent here on DU as well as other websites. I agree with you but I would extend the reach to all states, probably every where in the world.

[Warpy]

9. Yes, I knew true believer Catholics in Boston

who were just as manipulated as the Baptists in Kansas and for the same reasons. It was sad to see good people turned so backwards.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. It was about Kansas because he is from here

He grew up in the same suburb I did. Part of his reason for writing the book is the huge divide between those of us here in eastern Kansas where the largest cities are and the largely rural central and western parts of the state. Republicans here in the KC area are not much like Republicans in western Kansas. Yes there are some exceptions but generally there is a great divide.

Frank was here speaking a couple months ago (he has a new book out) and he emphasized several times that the Republicans in Kansas who inspired him to write his book are NOT the same kind of Republicans as the ones in DC. But the ones in DC are using the ones in KS to promote their agenda. Hence, the focus on family values and issues that attract the small town rural GOPers.

Another interesting part of both the book and the movie is the so-called Summer of Mercy in Wichita in 1991. Wichita was literally invaded by tens of thousands of anti-choicers who spent the summer protesting at Dr Tiller's clinic. The state and national GOP took advantage of that and signed up activists all summer. Some even moved to Kansas. The following year Wichita's longtime Democratic congress rep was defeated by a rabid right winger. And the GOP activism continues, 19 years later. I am frankly surprised it took them so long to stop Dr. Tiller. They went after him in court and in the state house until they finally murdered him.

Now imagine if the Democratic party had sent 'recruiters' to Crawford, TX in 2005, when Cindy Sheehan brought tens of thousands to join her in front of Dubya's fake ranch.

The GOP has the organizing and party building tactic down. As unpleasant as this movie is, it is an important study in building a party.

[REP]

10. I love the Liz Lemon/Tina Fey line about the "real America" -

"No part of America is more American than any other part!"

[omega minimo]

12. He's not DOING that. Frank's word is brilliant AND accessible and people should see for themselves

not pull opinions out of the air or borrow them from others.

[Berry Cool]

13. I will see it with an open mind.

I just find other people's opinions worth staying open to. Then I can compare them to my own.

[omega minimo]

14. He is one of the most lucid voices on these issues for the past 2 decades. TY

[regnaD kciN]

4. Starring Craig T. Nelson as Karl Rove...

...and Roseanne Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is-Now as Kansas.

:evilgrin:

[omega minimo]

11. Frank's work is brilliant, his view is broad, his focus here is the state he grew up in. Your post

is petty.

[Neecy]

17. I grew up in Los Angeles

....this does not make me an expert on Fresno.

I know where Frank is from. I've lived there. It's about as large of a culture gap between his hometown and the rest of the state as it is from Los Angeles to Fresno.

I also read his book, and saw how he cherry-picked the most nutty, the most radical, the most batshit insane people from downstate as he could find. His economic points are valid. His characterization of much of the state is not. That isn't being petty, that's having an opinion - which is why we're here, isn't it? Don't like it, don't read it.

[omega minimo]

19. His work and his new film deserve more attention and benefit of the doubt

than your petty posturing, which you hope will prejudice those who see his film.

[Neecy]

21. No facts, just insults

Do you just crash threads to be argumentative, unpleasant and insulting? Because that seems to be your major contribution here. What an ugly person.

[omega minimo]

22. Look in the mirror

Your OP to undermine the work of one of the most lucid voices we have had on crucial issues for two decades does a DISSERVICE to DU and makes you look like you can't comprehend what he's talking about; and can't allow him to make his point about his state and our nation without having it be all about you and what people might think about YOU.

That's petty.

And I have only stated facts, about his work and importance as a writer. Anyone with the brains to read or watch Frank's work is not going to be make the assumptions you fear. Do you have any appreciation for the work at all? Have you ever read Tom Frank? Have you seen the movie?

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[omega minimo]

23. .

[depakid]

16. Twisted religion, an outright culture of lies- and large doses of irrational fear

pretty well sums it up.

You'll find good deeds by individuals everywhere- but collectively- and there's little use denying this- the state (as with other states sharing these characteristics) is an international embarrassment (and at times a disgrace).