Subway promotes a salmon sandwich in Oregon by advertising, “Another reason you’re lucky not to live in Kansas.” Hallmark releases a birthday card using a “CSI: Topeka” gag suggesting a corpse has been “bored to death.” And humorists everywhere exploit (and misreport) the State Board of Education’s evolution vote. It makes you wonder whether anything — including the state’s $4.5 million “As big as you think” branding campaign — can take the joke out of Kansas these days. In any event, state officials need to get creative about fighting back.
Not that this is the best means, but it was notable that Oklahoma just rounded up some of its celebrities (Johnny Bench, Barry Switzer, Bobby Murcer, Jimmy Webb) and put them on an “Oklahoma Rising” float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, featuring Kristen Chenoweth of NBC’s “The West Wing” singing the title song from “Oklahoma!” “People are starting to fall in love with Oklahoma,” Bench reportedly said. OK then.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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12 Comments
We could put up signs on all roads leading into the state, reading, in BIG letters:KANSAS: WHERE SUICIDE IS REDUNDANT AND THE INMATES RUN THE ASYLUM. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Kansas State Board of Education ought to be mad at evolution, having been passed over and remaining undeveloped. You’d be mad too.
Kansas has been a joke for a long time! There’s a reason Baum set the beginning of the “Wizard of Oz” in Kansas; it’s the ultimate drab place to contrast the colorful Oz. It will take a lot more than clever PR to fix our image, maybe even (perish the thought) substantial change! Most likely, we’ll just stay a joke.
A nurse went to help out at a hospital in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and a doctor said to her, “You’re from Wichita? You’re too cosmopolitan to be from Kansas.”
When I travel out of state and anybody asks, I just tell them I’m from Texas. I get tired of the BS otherwise.
Having moved here in the past year, I am amazed at the poor perception of Kansas that Kansans have. It is almost like an inferiority complex.
When meeting people and they learn I moved here from Florida, inevitably, I get asked “why?” in a highly doubtful tone.
When I moved to Florida from California, nobody asked me why. When I first moved to California 20 years ago, nobody ever questioned that one.
But, I got asked a lot by locals.. like there is no valid reason to move here.
It appears the poor image is perpetuated by people living here, in many ways, idiotic (like the BoE) and other, more subtle ways.
Ray,
I got the same reception when I moved from San Diego. My reply was always: California.
Some of us have a healthy disrespect for big city life. Me being one of them. I’ll take small city/town life with all its petty politics, cronyism, and unevolved BOE’s anyday.
If you want the state to grow, the solution is really quite simple as Ray and JM can attest to.
Simply air commercials on the east and west coasts asking the simple question…..Is the beach really worth it? then show the cost of living diffrences.
Kansas is boring and bland, dont try to kid people who live here! BUT it I would rather live here than out there based solely on cost of living and not living elbow to elbow with all the people, and my 12min commute to work
I love it when friends who live in high cost areas tell me how much their house cost. Then I find what is available around here for the same price and email them the photos. :)
I’ll take our affordable housing and my griping about “traffic” in my 10 minute commute any day.
Kansas is a great state with a great history. As a Scout in years gone by, my troop often camped on top of a flat top mesa in Barber County, about 90 miles southwest of Wichita. From there, you could see for miles and visualize pioneers, buffalo, trappers and Indians in the tributaries of the Medicine River valley below.
In later years, I studied the great history of Kansas from border to border back in the 1800’s and 1900’s through settlement, dust storms, wars, improvements, etc.
It has only been in the last ten years that I have noticed the hands of all kinds of money men, music men selling non-existant band uniforms, snake oil salesmen, self-serving politicians, etc. working every angle to extract dollars from the pockets of Kansas citizens and taxpayers.
One of those frauds is writing a new slogan for Kansas, “Kansas, as big as you think,” if I have it correct, at the cost to Kansas taxpayers of $4.5 million. As far as I am concerned, “Kansas, the Sunflower state,” continues to serve well enough, thank you.
Allen Ginsberg called Wichita the vortex of the nation- talent originates here and spins off to the coasts. You’d be surprised at how many well-known artists, writers and musicians Kansas has produced, but who had to go someplace else to get the recognition they deserved!
Personally, I always liked “Ahhhhhh, Kansas!” It could be said with any and every emotion.