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Sometimes being right is personally rewarding, sometimes it's of financial benefit, and sometimes, unfortunately, it's just downright painful. I recently wrote an article, "What's Still The Matter With Thomas Frank?" about the upcoming (at the time) documentary by filmmakers Laura Cohen and Joe Winston, inspired by Thomas Frank's 2004 bestselling book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" The article I wrote caused a minor brouhaha with the filmmakers, who posted a commentary rebuttal and a photo of yours truly on the official film website. Other than framing me, the way liberals often do conservatives, as boiling over with anger and throwing Nazi labels where they have not been applied, it seemed like a typical day at the office of politics. I was somewhat amazed, and quite pleased, to see the comment section on their website fill with a majority of comments in my favor. People seemed to easily get the points I was trying to make.

What did come from the postings on the filmmaker's website, in combination with comments from many of my radio listeners, was the need for me to watch the movie myself and write a review. At first, I thought this was beyond my purview, but after reading film critic Roger Ebert's admittedly biased, bosomed embrace of the movie, I re-qualified myself with lightning speed. Watching the film in general was not a problem, as I would only be taking the advice I gave to readers in my original article. However, to watch the film post-haste was slightly more difficult, as the film was only being aired in leftist strongholds, such as the Democratic fundraiser in Wichita, Kansas (where I would have to shell out cash at the door), or the liberal "Alliance for Peace and Justice Organization," in Manhattan, Kansas. To avoid having to fund the Democratic Party, Manhattan was the choice.

The accommodations in Manhattan were nice. After the crowd had been properly prepped with an oration of the glowing review by Roger Ebert, the lights dropped and an eerie morose melody started the movie as viewers began their journey into the filmmakers view of the great state of Kansas, and its people.

As a life-long Kansan, my experience was two-fold. First, the imagery of the movie has some very stunning footage of hay fields and country homes that was very beautiful to view. It is hard to deny the physical beauty of this state, and I admit to being biased with that opinion. Unfortunately, the film at its heart is not about the landscape but the people that inhabit that landscape, and more accurately, certain types of people. This is the heart of the review, or what the cattlemen might call the "meat" of the matter. Those weak of heart or lacking a firm grip on reality should just get up now, and with the same effort one would use to avoid a true Kansas cattle stampede, run while the running's good.

I am afraid to report that when I compared Thomas Frank's book, which I believe was a cheap hatchet job on the majority of the people of Kansas, and the 2009 Cohen/Winston documentary of the same name, I found that the apple does not fall very far from the tree. A few fundamental themes ran through the film. The first theme is that when Christians and their values are mixed with politics it is the recipe for political doom. The liberal crowd on viewing night seemed quite joyful as the pro-lifer, Phill Kline, is defeated by Paul Morrison for Kansas Attorney General (I wonder how voting for Morrison worked out for those voters). The next theme that is painstakingly drawn out (in the Wild West World story) is that when religion and politics are mixed, it causes great financial hardship and calamity.

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