Information Maven: Greg Meyer

Thomas Frank’s engaging book What’s the Matter with Kansas tackles a conundrum: how to explain the appeal that conservative politicians have in the once-Populist state. Frank’s thesis is simple, but his narrative is more tangled than a simple culture war come home to roost. Frank believes the people who benefit least from the conservative mandate believe in it the most.

Of Johnson County, Kansas , Frank writes: “[b]ack in the eighties, the journalist Richard Rhodes nailed the place with just two words: Cupcake Land. To the irritation of local leaders, the nickname has stuck. Cupcake Land is a metropolis built entirely to the developer’s plan, without the interference of angry proles or ethnic pols as in nearby Kansas City. Cupcake Land encourages no culture but that which increases property values; supports no learning but that which burnishes the brand; hears no opinions but those that will further fatten the cupcake elite; tolerates no rebellion but that expressed in haircuts and piercings and alternative rock. You know what it’s like even though you haven’t been there. Smooth jazz. Hallmark cards. Applebees. Corporate Woods. Its greatest civic holiday is the turning-on of the Christmas lights at a nearby shopping center — an event so inspirational to the cupcake mind that the mall thus illuminated has been rendered in paint by none other than Thomas Kinkade.”

Some might describe this as the rantings of another elite blue-stater complaining that the world is too bland for his taste. But Frank points out that this is the American Dream as many would imagine it. Unfortunately, the reality of this dream is moving farther and farther away from most Americans. Small businesses are indeed thriving in many places, but much of Kansas is being consolidated in fewer and fewer hands.