Rethinking the Middle: U.S. News Media and the Rise of "Middle America," 1968-72

• In Event: Inventing Communities, Spheres, and Publics

Abstract

In historical work on the 1960s and 1970s US, the term “Middle America” is largely associated with President Richard Nixon and the Republicans, as a rhetorical trope they used to name and appeal to the culturally conservative white working class voters they identified as their base. As this paper argues, the story of “Middle America” is much broader: the term was coined by liberal syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft, and journalists and liberals as well as conservatives saw Middle Americans as a key political constituency alienated by cultural change, uneasy about racial progress, antagonistic to upper middle class white liberals, and critical for elites to better understand. Drawing on coverage of white workers in major newspapers, magazines, and popular books from 1968 to 1972, this paper develops a new origin story for the term “Middle America,” one that stresses the role of journalism in constructing reality and marking class difference.

Author

• Christopher Cimaglio, U of Pennsylvania