Paul Harris, British Observer, Kansas Day Speaker

Last spring, Paul Harris made a splash in the Sunflower State when he wrote “Ode to Kansas” for his newspaper, The Observer.

Harris, a British journalist based in New York, has visited Kansas on various story assignments over the past few years.

He spent some time in Ellsworth while writing about the depopulation of the Midwest, covered the BTK murder case in Wichita, and during the 2004 Presidential campaigns, he reported from Johnson County.

“As most journalists do, you get an awful lot of stuff in your notebook that you can’t often use in your stories that you cover, but you want to get it out somewhere, so that was how I wrote that column ‘Ode to Kansas.'”

That particular piece won him many fans in Kansas and beyond.

“The reaction to this column was really quite overwhelming in terms of anything I’ve written. It’s one of the biggest reactions I’ve had,” Harris said.

It was that column which prompted his appearance in Topeka on Friday. He spoke at a Kansas Day celebration sponsored by the Washburn Center for Kansas Studies.

His talk was entitled, “What’s the Matter with Everyone Else?: A Foreign Perspective on Kansas.”

Harris focused his comments on stereotypes, saying that it is easier to pigeonhole a country or state, rather than understand the nature and complexity of the region.

He said that Kansas is often seen as a right-wing Christian place, and as a place where the crazies come from – noting the state’s drama with evolution and also the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church.

“It seems to me that Kansas has a problem, that it has become shorthand for something,” Harris said.

Harris said that just as the media uses Kansas as shorthand for “right-wing Christian,” Massachusetts has become shorthand for “liberal.”

“There’s such a strong attempt to divide America along red and blue lines,” he said.

“When you do those maps, it is a blue coast and a red hinterland,” he said. When you do it on a county level, things change completely. It becomes not the ‘coast versus the middle’ or the ‘middle versus the coast,’ it clearly becomes much more of an urban-rural issue.”

“The influence that those states’ maps have – of how America votes – is huge in the way that America is seen and it’s highly false because you’re coloring entire states blue or red on the back of a presidential vote which may have been like 2 or 3 or 4 percent either way…”

Harris covered both Bush and Kerry during the 2004 Presidential campaign.

“I think with the Midwest, it just represents a set of values that they have to pay homage to for political reasons without having to understand the place or really valuing it,” he said.

The Iowa Caucuses are “a great example of people coming to the Midwest to talk about issues. But they never come back once the caucuses are over.”

“And sort of watching the top-level American campaign is very instructive of just how the Midwest is seen as a place just to dip into for your own propaganda purposes and then dip out.”

“But many Americans, especially powerful ones, don’t really get the American Midwest, so what chance do foreigners have for understanding a place like Kansas? And sadly, generally, the answer is ‘not much.'”

As an antidote to stereotyping, and to better understand other people and places, Harris suggests travel.

“Nothing is a substitute for knowledge and an easy way of getting knowledge is travel and interaction with people,” he said.

“I’m extremely fortunate in my job in that I’ve been to curious parts of the world in curious times. I’ve met a very, very broad range of people and with very few exceptions, I’ve generally found that even though you may disagree with them on a whole bunch of issues, there’s always common ground. It’s kind of a homely sort of thing to say, but I do generally think it’s true.”