Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences 
Why do people think Midwesterners are boring, un-cultured idiots? Because usually you’ll get at least two out of three.
I should explain my credentials: I lived in Nebraska (40 minutes from the South Dakota and Iowa borders) for the first 17 years of my life. It was a town that, compared to the surrounding communities, had ‘culture’ (a college, a library and a drug community). At my high school of about 250 kids, we never had more that six who weren’t Caucasian. Of my graduating class of 60, perhaps five could identify a Picasso. Maybe 10 could tell you who wrote the Communist Manifesto. I went to college for two years in Minneapolis before heading to the East Coast. Minneapolis is a very nice town, as the above posts mention, and living in the heart of it you do get a wiff of the world, but at its core Minneapolis is very Midwestern.
The problem is that Midwesterners have a narrow-minded set of standards. Culture is not that important. The world is not that important. Even family is not that important. The one thing Midwesterners think is important is security. They like to feel secure; they like to know they have money and people to depend on and things that are familiar. Even small-town hierarchies are based on security. Traveling or learning about interesting things or doing interesting things isn’t always safe, and so these aren’t a true Midwesterner’s top priorities.
It’s too bad, but those who could most benefit the Midwest leave early on, and very few want to return. I feel bad saying there’s nothing there, but there isn’t. It’s not that there never could be something worthwhile, or that the Midwest can never be culturally sound. It could. But for now, it is full of people who do not care to change, and little else.