After traveling from Ohio to Iowa, Richard Longworth has written a jeremiad and now dives in with an effort to globalize the Midwest. Reviewer Tim Collins argues that government needs to be part of this moving picture.

Time Magazine's Joe Klein writes today about the "myth of America." Actually, it's more the myth of rural America, of good people living in small towns sprinkled across the countryside. How Klein knows people believe in this myth is hard to know, but.... "Except that's not really true," Klein writes. "We haven't been a nation of small towns for nearly a century. It is the suburbanites and city dwellers who do the fighting and hourly-wage work now, and the corporations who grow our food. But (Sarah) Palin's embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins."

Klein says this myth is a product of Reagan Republicanism made more important this year by the race of the Democratic nominee. "Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized," Klein writes. Obama, in fact, represents the way of life that "displaced Main Street America." How could one guy know so much, a reader might ask?

Anyway, Democrats lack a good myth, Klein contends. And small town Americans are confused, he laments. He writes (in a final bit of condescension meant to be analysis): "They live in a place...where myths are more potent than the hope of getting past the dour realities they face each day." Jeez....

Two Tennesseans, transplanted in California, strike media gold with an old shtick: the bumpkin who speaks the out-rednecking-rageous truth.

Jon Stewart got a dose of Daily Yonder demographics this week, when Yonder Co-editor Bill Bishop appeared as a guest on the Daily Show. Bishop discussed his book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart.

Stewart grasped the seriousness of the issue right away. "Are you afraid we are going to have a lifestyle civil war" between Republicans and Democrats?, he asked. "Obviously the Reds [Republicans] would win because they have guns. Although, you throw a nice hot latte in someone's face, that's not going to feel good."

Bishop's study shows that Americans are choosing to live near and associate with people who share their political and social beliefs. He said the trend is reflected in rural America. Thirty years ago, rural Americans voted along the same lines as the rest of the nation. Today, the rural vote trends Republican.

Watch the whole interview here

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