Quotes / Flyover Country

Fiction:

Oh, there's nothing halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you
When we treat you,
Which we may not do at all
There's an Iowa kind of special
Chip-on-the-shoulder attitude
We've never been without, that we recall

— The Music Man, "Iowa Stubborn"

We're called 'The Heartland'
Not very smart-land
IQ's are very low but threat levels are high
I hate to generalize
But have you seen the thighs?
Most haven't seen their genitalia in a while

— NOFX, Leaving Jesusland

You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

— Jim, Blazing Saddles

Bethany: Were they sent to Hell?
Metatron: Worse. Wisconsin. For the entire span of human history.

— Dogma

"Vagrancy" wasn't it? That's gonna look real good on his grave stone in Arlington: Here lies John Rambo, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, survivor of countless incursions behind enemy lines. Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA.

— Col. Trautman, First Blood

Bill: What's so 'interesting' about radio?
Dave: (helpfully) I think radio is a fascinating medium.
Bill: You're from Wisconsin. Artificial light is fascinating to you.

— NewsRadio, "Bill's Autobiography"

Mulder: (on phone) Where are you?
Scully: I'm in a convenience store on the outskirts of, uh... civilization.

— The X-Files, "War of the Coprophages"

Fry: I'm impressed. In my time we had no idea Mars had a university.
Professor Farnsworth: That's because then Mars was a uninhabitable wasteland, much like Utah. But unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable when the university was founded in 2636.

— Futurama, "Mars University"'

I see the shapes
I remember from maps
I see the shoreline
I see the whitecaps
A baseball diamond, nice weather down there
I see the school and the houses where the kids are
Places to park by the factories and buildings
Restaurants and bars for later in the evening
Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas
And I have learned how these things work together
I see the parkway that passes through them all
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say
I wouldn't live there if you paid me
I wouldn't live like that, no siree
I couldn't do the things the way those people do
I couldn't live there if you paid me to

— Talking Heads, "The Big Country"

"C'mon, guys! We're getting Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Louisiana! What are the chances all those states suck?"

— Thomas Jefferson on the Louisiana Purchase, Family Guy

"As you see, Mr. Bond, the satellite is at present over... Kansas. Well, if we destroy Kansas, the world may not hear about it for years."

— Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Diamonds Are Forever

"I’ve never seen a skeleton army, but if they exist, I’m absolutely positive they’d be marching on Ohio. There’s nothing else to do in Ohio. It’s just corn, corn, skeleton army, possibly evil corn maze, football, corn."

—That Ain't Witchcraft

Real Life:

All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.

— Dawn Powell

The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn't any there there.

— Gertrude Stein

It is hard for the new-class person to realize that Manhattan is not the world. Or as the somewhat alarmed Philip Rahv said to me after he had taken a drive across the United States, 'My God! There are so many of them!' In theory, Rahv had always known that there were a couple hundred million of gentiles out there, but to see them, in the flesh, unnerved him. I told him that I was unnerved, too, particularly when they start showering in the blood of the lamb.

— Gore Vidal

Growing up in Ohio was just planning to get out.

— Jim Jarmusch

This woman from Oklahoma once told me: 'Yer goin' to HELL, boy!' I was like, 'Well, I'm already in Oklahoma...'

— Bill Hicks

David: The TV then reports Ted Kord talking about the stolen scarab, and then refers to Kord Industries as, and this cracked me up, "The Blackwater of the Midwest."
Chris: Oh man. "The Blackwater of the Midwest." That makes it sound like from Ohio to the Dakotas is just some Post-Apocalyptic War Zone with roving gangs of mercenaries, which… well, it's not entirely accurate, anyway.

— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Smallville ("Booster")

Jack: I watched this several times as a kid; I still kinda like it.
Rich: What did you see in it??
Jack: I grew up on a farm, and we didn't have—
(everyone guffaws)
Jay: You can end it right there. "I liked Supergirl because I grew up on a farm." Cut.

— Best of the Worst watches Supergirl (1984)

Across the country there were thousands of places just like it, places that were not only isolated but insulated, places that had gone through the growing pains of America without anyone paying attention, places that existed as islands unto themselves with no link to the great cities except that they all sang the same national anthem to the same flag at sporting events. They were the kind of places that you saw from a plane on a clear night if you happened to look out the window, a concentration of little beaded dots breaking up the empty landscape with several veins leading in and out, and then bleak emptiness once again.

— Friday Night Lights

The new Vikings stadium will come with a clear roof that will cause the deaths of thousands of birds simply by existing. So I'd like to thank the Vikings for supplying me with the greatest metaphor ever for Minnesotan passive aggression.... This is the shitty team and criminal organization that Vikings fans like me deserve. These people never get excited about anything except when they have a chance to whisper 'I hear it's very Jewish' under their breath to other people. They can't get enough of that. Minnesotans are as fickle as Sun Belt-area fans, without the justifiable excuse of having better things to do. They hate everything and everyone, and if you aren't from Minnesota they'll treat you as if you aren't even there. You may as well be a fucking ghost. It's like you speak a whole other language if you didn't grow up six blocks from the Hansenjohnsons in White Bear Lake. The most exciting thing about Minnesota is when people get shot there in various iterations of Fargo.

— Drew Magary, "Why Your Team Sucks 2014: Minnesota Vikings"

The Nonexistent States of America: Most of the Britons on the board firmly believe that the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado etc. are entirely fictional, and were only invented by American airline companies in order to make their planes seem faster than they are on flights from the east coast to the west coast. This is strongly denied by most of the American posters, especially those who believe they live in the said nonexistent states: on the contrary, according to the Americans, it is Delaware that is fictional.

— Alternate History Wiki, "Running Jokes"

The way I see it, we have far too many states, many of them serving no useful purpose whatsoever. I first noticed this when my wife and I drove from Pennsylvania to Colorado. It took us practically forever to get there, mainly because there were all these flat, boring states in the way. Take Kansas. Kansas just sits there, taking up an enormous amount of space that you are required to drive across if you want to get to Colorado.

— Dave Barry, "States for Sale, Cheap"

In our lovely line of work, we often get to do a lot of driving across this wonderful land of ours, which means we get to go through that wonderful... place of snow and rock called Northern Ontario! (audience cheers) Has everyone driven across Northern Ontario? (audience cheers) Stop cheering! For those of you who haven't, Northern Ontario is eighty BILLION kilometers long! There are thirteen people who live there! All of whom are named "Frank"! Even the girl!

— Trevor Strong of The Arrogant Worms, introducing "Mounted Animal Nature Trail" with a Canadian take on the trope

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