Common Knowledge

The fattest, booziest, most depressed and most down-minded schlubs in America live in the lower Midwest and the South, and they tend to vote Republican and against socially progressive initiatives. I think most of us already knew this, but a Gallup poll, condensed in a 3.14 Daily Mail story, has re-reported the basic facts.

The saddest and most personally screwed-up voters (poor health, obese, boozing, cigarette-smoking, living hand-to-mouth in trailer parks or McMansions, driving gas guzzlers, poorest educational systems, highest divorce rates) live in West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and Oklahoma…in that order. Yes, there are many thousands of self-destructive dim bulbs who live in the Northeast, the Southwest, the Northwest, California and so on, but their numbers are less concentrated.

The Depression States basically constitute Tea Party country. A brief scan of the U.S. Senators and Congresspersons representing these areas tells you everything you need to know about why this country doesn’t work. Boehner, McConnell — not all of the anti-progressive Congressional naysayers, corporate fellaters, obstinate crazies and stoppers come from these states, but a high percentage of them do.

I say again that the best thing that could happen all around would be to create a separate nation in these Midwestern and Southern areas — just cut the yokels off and let them raise their own revenues and nurture their retro beliefs, values and prejudices. They’re just a drag on the rest of the country and the sooner Red America is cut loose, the better for the rest of us. Seriously.

This isn’t the 1860s. Our borders are secure, we have nuclear weapons, and nobody’s going to invade. We can be two countries and make out just fine. Yugoslavia broke up into two or three chunks and they’re doing okay. Czechoslovakia became two nations and they’re holding it together. We could create our out Czech Republic — a Blue America — and let the “Slovakians” have their own. I’m perfectly serious here. The heehaws are what’s wrong. Get rid of them and a lot of the nation’s big problems will become much more managable.

Would we still have to cope with corporate corruption and self-destructive forces in an All-Blue Nation? Of course. Would life still be hard and harrowing at times? Yes. But at least we’d have a better chance of being able to fix problems with the crazies out of the picture.

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  • Eloquence

    You had your fifteen minutes of daily hate. Do you feel better now, Jeffrey?

    • http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Jeffrey Wells

      Are you aware that this data isn’t made up? It’s not me. It’s the fucking facts. Deal with them.

      • Joshsleeps

        I live in Oklahoma and it pains me to see these numbers. I can’t contest the facts, but there are so many good, intelligent, progressive people surrounding me. Sometimes I forget that just outside of my cozy Tulsa bubble is a bible-thumping, meth-addled nightmarescape.

  • cyanic

    “hey tend to vote Republican and again socially progressive initiatives”

    Needs correcting.

    • http://twitter.com/myownhausfrau myownhausfrau

      “They tend to vote Republican and agin socially progressive initiatives” is how it’s said in WVa.

  • coxcable

    Southerners, in their defense, don’t wait in line for hours to spend $300 on a phone that’s 1% different than the phone they currently have.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sveinung.mikkelsen Sveinung Mikkelsen

    You really shouldn’t use the break-up of Yugoslavia as a model for dissolving a federal union.

    • http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Jeffrey Wells

      Things would probably get ugly in the newly formed Red America at first, yes. But a replay of the genocide we saw in the 1990s between the Serbians and Bosnians seems unlikely.

      • http://www.facebook.com/sveinung.mikkelsen Sveinung Mikkelsen

        Well, here’s hoping.

  • jedgeco

    “create a separate nation in these Midwestern and Southern areas”

    Is leaving millions of poor and underrepresented minorities, who wouldn’t have the ability to pick up and move to the enlightened Blue States of America, hanging out to dry not too big a price for you to not have the same passport as someone from Mississippi?

  • MovieSquad

    It’s probably an easier play to have California become its own country. Why not support that instead?

  • Max Stephens

    I have lived in nine states in the south, southwest, and northeast and am not surprised by these rankings. Anyone know what the story is with Rhode Island?

  • MovieFan

    Jeff, some questions: A) Have you ever even been to any of these states? B) What do you make of the fact that, say, Kansas ranks higher than California and New York? Or that South Dakota is higher than the entire Northeast except for New Hampshire and Vermont? C) So there are no “hee-haws” in Texas? D) What’s up with New Jersey and Rhode Island? E) Is Utah a progressive state? It’s probably the most Republican state in the entire country.

    In short: The divide is less about geography than it is about rural/suburban voters/lifestyles vs. the more urban ones. Is New Orleans really a bastion of backwards Republican ideals, but Utah/Montana etc. aren’t? I mean, come on. This is not as simple as you make it out to be.

    Your “Blue America” idea would not make any of our problems any more manageable.

    • abbey normal

      Totally true, re: urban vs. rural/suburban.

  • DCA

    I have been a long time fan of Jeffrey and Hollywood Elsewhere (back to the Movie Poop Shoot days) but lately the site is starting to feel suffocating. Where is the joy or love for movies? Everything is an attack, even the posts covering the films you were passionate about (SLP and Zero Dark Thirty) seemed to be less about their successes and more about the opposition’s shortcomings or an audiences inability to accept what you connected with. I realize that a single reader removing this page from their bookmarks will make much difference but I wanted my opinion to be heard before I left.

    • http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Jeffrey Wells

      Oh, fuck off.

      • CBJ

        Mature. I, like some of the other readers, am curious to know how many Joe Popcorners or Red Staters or, hell, any garden variety southerners you actually know, for all the authority you relentlessly claim to have on the subjects. I grew up in a small conservative Southern town AND am generally liberal AND like both the films of Robert Bresson and Steven Spielberg AND have a college education AND care about what I eat. All those simultaneously compute?

        • FyodorTesta

          Wells doesnt have a college degree.

      • punkedup

        Early dementia.

        • Mr_Jeffrey

          It’s not that early. He’s over 65.

    • MisterQuigley

      Yeah, go fuck yourself, DCA. Quit pretending this blog is something it’s not. Jeff celebrates film in his own way, but passionately. Ignore the political/random posts, child…

  • http://www.filmjerk.com/ Edward Havens

    Screw that. The West Coast States need to form a new nation with Baja California and British Columbia along for the ride. The Federal Republic of the Pacific Rim, or some shit like that.

  • Elsalvador Dali

    Yugoslavia?

  • Elsalvador Dali

    What a dumb Idea. Just like the Texas assholes who talk about secession, no thought given to the consequences. Just idle daydreaming in front of a computer screen.

  • http://twitter.com/jasctt Jason T.

    Said it before, but this site has always needed a filter that readers can click on to get rid of the Wells’ obsessions that have grown oh so tiresome. Click on “fatties” and you won’t see every post about the obese. Click on “Spielberg” to bypass those so many posts “Click on “J-Law,” “grain,” “1:33,” etc. You get the idea. it would rule and make this site so much fresher again.

    • Aaron

      You mean a Hollywood site actually about Hollywood? :-)

      • abbey normal

        The site is, in fairness, called “Hollywood Elsewhere,” which does imply some content might run somewhat further afield.

    • MisterQuigley

      So many pussies in this thread. This is not the blog for you, Jason, and your precious needs. See you at Awards Daily, bro!

  • Roybatty

    “The fattest, booziest, most depressed and most down-minded schlubs in America live in the lower Midwest and the South…”

    Clearly Jeff hasn’t visited Wisconsin….

  • The Petulant Pug

    “Preserve the Union?! Why?!? Them “Johnny Rebs” ain’t nothing but bamboozled Pie Eaters, belly achin’ Graybacks and wallpapered Scalawags! Mr President, I must protest!” -Jeremiah Theophilous Wells 1860

  • http://moviebob.blogspot.com/ MovieBob

    EDIT: With apologies for length…

    Look, “trimming the fat” of a society vis-a-vi “give the assholes their own country if they just promise to stay there” is always a happy little morbid thought experiment (unless you’re, y’know “the fat,”) but it just doesn’t work out in practical terms.

    Let’s say you DID somehow convince “Red America” to just go be themselves someplace else. Well, where is “someplace else,” exactly? You can’t give them the northern border, because “we” (“Blue America”) need that for trade. Ditto the coasts. Put them on the Southern border and you’ll get the same trade-disruptions plus they’ll be at war with Mexico/South America within a year. Alaska isn’t big enough (plus it’d be a shame to lose that wilderness) and you can’t just leave a festering clump of impotent sub-intellectual rage in the “center” of the country surrounded by what they’d see as “enemy states” on all sides – that’s a recipe for disaster; imagine if Palestine was in the CENTER of Israel, rather than next to it.

    It’s equally tempting to say that, now that demography shows the urban/metropolitan voter blocs continuing to expand and remain nominally-progressive safely into the future; we should junk “state’s rights” as a pre-globalism relic and just let the overwhelmingly-blue “producer states” run the table votewise… but our own history tells us what happens when enough people get mad at being ignored/unrepresented by their own government. Bottom line? You’re NOT going to “get rid” of these people.

    Y’know what will save this country? Declining birth-rate. Yeah, I know nobody likes to say it or hear it. And no, I’m not talking about China-style “one child” facism – I’m simply talking about helping a culture evolve “forward” on it’s own.

    Fewer people = more resources = more prosperity. We’re in the mess we’re in LARGE part due to the fact that our culture has continued to promote/encourage (via the settle-down/make-all-the-babies “nuclear family” model) people to procreate as though we still needed a HUGE population for the purposes of manual-labor and a large standing army despite mechanization and digitalization meaning we need FEWER physical laborers and human soldiers every day. We have, to put it bluntly, an excess of “extra” people. Most of them good, nice, faultless folks in their own right to be sure… but functionally “extra” all the same. And since the modern economy has effectively run out of places to “put” them (we’re already spending BILLIONS in subsidies pretending that the agriculture sector still matters just so the Midwest doesn’t turn into “Mad Max”) they’ve slipped further into an unsustainable cycle of sedentary consumption and even greater procreation.

    How do you fix it? You upend the culture… by letting things go where they (clearly) WANT to go: Let the anachronistic “family unit” decrease in cultural importance. Let “alternative lifestyles” become an acceptable, commonplace part of society (so people aren’t driven to “hide” themselves inside “the family unit.”) Let things like organized religion or “community” that tie us to a place and impede mobility fade as is their destiny.

    This will sound “classist” no matter what, but whatever: If even a slim majority of the U.S. population began conducting their lives in the manner of mid-to-upscale Gen X/Y urbanites right now – i.e. staying mobile career/lifestyle-wise, avoiding “settling down,” marrying significantly later in life (if at all) than their parents did, having maybe one or two kids on-average if they have them at all, etc. – we’d be starting to really pull ourselves out of this hole in about two generations, maybe less. Wouldn’t be easy – takes a precise mix of getting the government much less involved in some areas (end the “drug war,” simplify and universalize sex/birth-control laws) but much MORE involved in others (a MUCH stronger safety-net would decrease reliance on population-exploder systems like “family unit,” community, religion, etc.) …but it’s do-able, if we so wish it.

    • MisterQuigley

      Great post! Email Jeff to be a guest columnist, like once a week or something. He’d dig it, I’d dig it, everyone would dig it. Or at least pimp your blog…

  • IRRITABLE BOWEL CINEMA

    Go ahead and believe that racist bullshit Wells. Most black and Mexican people are fat so in effect you are expressing your racist attitudes

    You want tea party rednecks? Then why aren’t Texas, Idaho, Georgia, and South Dakota on the list?

    Also, Ohio is a blue state, having put Obama over the top in both elections. And having a very liberal Senator- Sherrod Brown.

  • George Prager

    “West Virginia” – Maggie and Terre Roche

    http://youtu.be/J3pMW4ssLrY

  • Raising_Kaned

    Oh, fuck you, Jeff.

    By the way — why’s Ohio red on that map when it has been instrumental (for better or worse) for putting Obama in office and keeping him there??

    • punkedup

      Wells reasons exactly like a Tea Partier (“Screw facts. I know this ratio is wrong”) and with as much prejudice. Why does he hate them so?

  • punkedup

    Wells is the “liberal” who mocks races and thinks some women deserve to get raped if they jog at 7:30 and thinks the homeless are all “bums” and….

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1329069668 Brian Bouton

    Based on the number of comments, Wells should keep posting diatribes like this to drive page views.

    • Aaron

      Sadly, I think that’s the point. Wells is too shrewd to be labelled a nutbag and I would imagine these screeds are manufactured to do exactly what you’ve suggested. I would rather see insightful commentary about the film industry (and to his credit, he does do this; just not as often), but we live in a media environment in which a purist viewpoint on cinema would just get eaten and then forgotten.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Franklin/100002431650806 John Franklin

    Obama eats dogs

    • MisterQuigley

      You should see what we feed the poor sods he’s Commander of…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Li-Wright/100001622678180 Li Wright

    These state statistics make me which that the two unions had separated. Let the South be the South and go away to its own land of Oz.

  • SaveFarris

    “We can be two countries and make out just fine.”
    Not if “Blue America” wants gas for their car, home heating fuel, electricity,etc. they won’t…

  • Edward Klein

    I’m late to this thread, but I had to chime in. After graduate school I moved to West Virginia to help start a theatre company. I met many creative, wonderful people there; including some fascinating mountain folks. What a boring America if everyone was a liberal.