The Red Sea - Want to know why George Bush won? Set sail into the crimson heart of America

washingtonpost.com ^ | Sunday, January 16, 2005 | David Von Drehle

[crushelits]

Early in December, with a photographer and his assistant, I drove from Nebraska, near the geographical center of the United States, to the heart of Texas -- more than 700 miles, through empty spaces and sprawling cities and all or parto f four states. We headed pretty much due south, no dodging or weaving. And never did we pass within 100 miles of a county that voted for Democrat John F. Kerry in the recent election.

THIS RED SEA DOES NOT APPEAR ON ANY MAP BUT ONE.

Neal Chaput and Jonathan Dolan from Kansas both voted for Kerry.

Joyce and James Smith live in Okla., the heart of Bush country.

Pam Sackschewsky, left, Merv Ocken and Alen Stuhr live in Waco, Neb

 

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[txzman]

Well, you can definitely tell who this reporter voted for. He must've talked to every Democrat in Waco and Nebraska who voted for Kerry. Have him come to MY part of Texas, or let me take him to San Angelo, Amarillo and the Panhandle.

[Batrachian]

I still want to know why the commies get to be blue and the decent Americans are red. Actually, that's why. The news media who decides these things didn't want to reinforce the true perception that their people are communists.

[NYpeanut]

You forgot the "dripping with condescension" alert

[SandRat]

Bush is from Texas. And a Texan who seeks the votes of Middle Americans has a lot of symbolic ground already plowed for him, plowed by the likes of Sam Houston and John Wayne, Davy Crockett and Gary Cooper.

Kerry is a Liberal Massachusetts boy. We may have enjoyed watching M.A.S.H. and laughing at the pompous and imperious Major Charles M. Winchester III M.D. but we sure weren't going to vote for his brother.

[Bar-Face]

This reminds me of something I have read about:
Back in the 19th century the British gentry used to go on trips to India to observe the Indians and how quaint they lived. In the United States, the gentry did the same thing only they went to the west to see the "Red Indians" and the cowboys. In this case, he went out to observe the habits of those strange people that inhabite "Flyoverland".

[Viking2002]

I couldn't get past the third page without wanting to rip the writer's head off and crap in the hole. It's a left-leaning piece of birdcage liner if there ever was one.

[SandRat]

What did you expect it is from the Whinington Pssssssst fish wrap.

[Notwithstanding]

Zoink! A blast from the past.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:-TN0fNKGA4YJ:freerepublic.info/focus/f-news/1209035/posts+notwithstanding++kerry+freerepublic+MASH&hl=en

[Notwithstanding]

go to the link and look at post #5

[SandRat]

hmmmm..... thinking the same thing!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"I still want to know why the commies get to be blue and the decent Americans are red."

Right you are. It was decided by broadcasters, actually:
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/3474.html

Mark Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and an expert in the use of maps as analytical and persuasive tools, found himself automatically reversing the current color code. "I remember talking in a class about the red states and blue states," he said, "and a student actually corrected me."

Online political discussion groups buzz with conspiracy theories about the maps, suggesting that Republican states were made red because that color typically represents the enemy on military combat maps, or because red has more negative psychological baggage (fiery, dangerous) than friendly, pacific blue.

Others have thought it simply a naïve attempt to avoid trafficking in stereotypes (Democrats are Reds, or socialists). Professor Monmonier suggested - jokingly - that the red-left, blue-right association more rightly follows the conventional ordering of visible light (red, yellow, green, blue, and so forth).

But in the United States, at least, the color coding has rarely been static.

An early marriage of red and blue with the two major parties is noted in the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas History Online, which describes a color-coding system developed in the 1870's to help illiterate and Spanish-speaking voters navigate English-language ballots in South Texas. Local Democratic leaders called their party the Blues; Republicans chose to be the Reds.

By late in the next century, however, few were guided by that historical tidbit - or any other convention.

"It's beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool," the television anchor David Brinkley noted on election night 1980, as hundreds of Republican-blue light bulbs illuminated NBC's studio map, signaling a landslide victory for Ronald Regan over the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter. Other staffers, Time magazine wrote, called it "Lake Reagan."

Mr. Carter's bulbs were red.

Five years later, in her book "My Story," Geraldine A. Ferraro recalled watching her 1984 vice presidential bid founder on the television screen. Mr. Reagan's victory this time around was rendered in both flavors. "One network map of the United States was entirely blue for the Republicans," she wrote. "On another network, the color motif was a blanket of red."

By the 1990's, the color scheme was becoming a bit more formalized - at least on network and cable television. But other news outlets continued to vary.

Time magazine had favored Democratic red and Republican white in the 1976 election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, then reversed those colors for Reagan and Carter in 1980. By 1988, the magazine was using Republican blue and Democratic red, and it stayed with that motif even through the 2000 election, which has colorized the nation's political language in precisely the opposite way.

[Texas_Jarhead]

interesting piece although I could have done without some of the author's liberal impressions

[squarebarb]

This man's sense of his own superiority to 'red staters' is unbelieveable. And his photographs are just one cxliche after another.

[squarebarb]

This man's sense of his own superiority to 'red staters' is unbelieveable. And his photographs are just one cxliche after another.

[squarebarb]

J-j-jeeze I d-d-did it again

[FrankR]

"I still want to know why the commies get to be blue and the decent Americans are red."

I think it's the same line of thinking as the "blue laws", "blue movies", etc. You know, the immoral, nasty, stuff.

Red - meaning hot, or dangerous, or stop, is the rest of us wanting this nonsense to cease, or we will revenge, and may the blues burn in hell.

[Cicero]

I suppose this guy really thinks he tried, but he sounds pretty much like some Victorian snob who set out on Safari into the heart of deepest Africa in the early Victorian period. In other words, he sees these people, but he certainly doesn't understand them or consider them as belonging to the same human race he belongs to.

There's a certain irony in the ending. "In that light, I looked again, and the world seemed to float off in every direction toward new beginnings and fresh possibilities."

For the first time he had a glimpse of what it might be like to LIVE out in the country among the eternal verities, catching glimpses of the eternal, instead of in a big city with one of those--what do you call them?--curbs. But you can bet your bippy he didn't stay there out in the boonies to see what it's really like. He and his buddy hopped back in the car, turned it in at the nearest rental agency, got on the plane, and flew back to DC in time for cocktail hour and his press deadline.

[gitmo]

This map is marked with the boundaries of the 3,141 counties or county equivalents in the 50 United States.

I can't find the original articles on this. Can anyone tell me how many counties voted for Kerry?