Novelist Jonathan Franzen surveys the landscape in no-man’s-land:
That's the story of my life. I'm insufficiently elitist for the self-important, and I'm insufficiently populist for the Oprah-philes. I'm not bad enough to be bad and I'm not good enough to be good. I wasn't east enough to be east, I wasn't west enough to be west. That really is the story of my life. And when I was young, it all made sense because the middle seemed like a good place to be... Politically in particular, but culturally as well, you have to choose sides in the United States. It's a rabidly divided country, and it makes me miserable because both sides are wrong. Don't they know it?