As a Midwesterner who takes a minimum of two showers a day, I
was not so much offended, as puzzled, by Katie Couric’s
remarks regarding her recent tour of the “great unwashed middle
of the country.”
I am aware that not everyone in the Midwest has the
compulsive bathing habits I have. My lovely hippie fiancée, who has
the annoying habit of conserving water, only washes once per day
and finds my second or third shower “obsessive.” True, but I happen
to enjoy the feel of hot water pelting my middle-aged body, and see
no reason to deprive myself of this one petty
extravagance.
More to the point, it has been my experience that personal
hygiene is far more lax on the coasts, than the Midwest. This
explains my fiancée’s Seattle and Portland friends’ preference for
the rank bouquet of sweat, sandalwood, and patchouli to good old
soap and water.
Here in the Midwest you would be hard pressed to find many
people who go about their day reeking of BO. Sure, every once in a
while you might come across a Mennonite farmer in the IGA (as I did
the other day) who smells kind of ripe, as I did the other day, but
it’s a rarity and even our homeless winos are strict about
performing their daily ablutions in the restrooms of our cities’
once grand public libraries.
Heritage plays a role in this. Much of the Midwest was
settled by Germanic peoples — Bavarian Catholics (the so-called
“scrubby Dutch,” a corruption of the German word
Deutsche) and Prussian and Norwegian
Lutherans to whom cleanliness was not only a virtue, but a moral
obligation. You will not find a people more obsessed with purity —
in all its forms — than the Germans. Back in the early 1990s, when
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland, I would sometimes slip
over the border to east Germany. I recall feeling instantly and
overwhelmingly oppressed — not by the remnants of communism or
fascism — but by the extreme cleanliness and order of the place.
The feeling was so palpable that I would experience a sudden rush
of relief upon returning to “dirty Poland.” While the Midwest’s old
Germanic character has been diluted significantly over the years, I
still occasionally hear tourists remark how surprisingly clean St.
Louis is.
SEVERAL COMMENTATORS have picked up on Katie’s caustic
remarks as more proof that the coastal elites look down (sometimes
literally) on those of us whose misfortune it is to live in the
“fly-over states.” That’s some balancing act: disparaging unwashed,
gun-toting, Bible-clinging Midwesterners, while allegedly devoting
one’s every waking hour to concerns about the plight of the working
man and the inner-city and rural poor, many of whom happen to
reside — you guessed it — in Middle America.
And what of the countless liberals who live in Midwestern
cities and university towns? What must Katie’s fellow travelers in
Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin think of being lumped in with the
Great Unwashed of Middle America? She was taken out of context,
they doubtless say. Besides when the CBS anchor refers to the Great
Unwashed of Middle America she clearly means filthy, middle class,
suburban Republicans.
I doubt Katie meant to insult a large portion of her
viewers. More likely, she probably just thinks in
clichés. Usually when we hear the CBS anchor
speak, she is reading someone else’s words, someone who can
actually construct sentences with some measure of competency. Left
to her own devices, Katie is probably unable to come up with a
single coherent sentence, and doubtless reaches for whatever old
chestnuts pop into her head.
Soon after the piece was published, Katie tried to excuse
her remarks by Tweeting Dictionary.com’s definition of Great
Unwashed: “of the general public, populace or masses. Referring to
overlooked people who r politically in the middle!” Was the Oxford
English Dictionary too costly for the $15 million journo? Oh, I
see, the OED calls the phrase “derogatory,” and refers to “the mass
or multitude of ordinary people” (emphasis
mine).
Only slightly less disturbing is the realization that
America’s number one newscaster has no idea where the Midwest is.
Her tour to “divine the mood” of those in the “middle of the
country” took her to Boston, Philadelphia, New Brunswick, New
Jersey, and Chicago. Basically, you had one coastal elite asking
other east coasters what kind of mood Middle Americans are in. I
can tell you this much, we were in a lot better mood before the CBS
Evening News anchor called us stinky.
But we Midwesterners are a forgiving folk. We don’t hold a
grudge, especially toward a bona fide A-list celebrity. That said,
Katie is welcome to come “divine my mood” any time. Just as long as
she calls ahead. I’ll need time to put on a clean pair of
socks.
