Parentheses states

Parentheses states is a neologism and Americanism coined by author Tom Wolfe to describe the West Coast and the East Coast of the United States. It is an answer to the phrase "flyover country," a coastal pejorative sometimes used to describe middle America. The phrase first emerged during a 2006 interview Wolfe did with the Wall Street Journal in which Wolfe described the social and political climate of New York:
And so many of them are so caught up in this kind of metropolitan intellectual atmosphere that they simply don't go across the Hudson River. They literally do not set foot in the United States. We live in New York in one of the two parenthesis states. They're usually called blue states--they're not blue states, the states on the coast. They're parenthesis states--the entire country lies in between."
The term has since been promulgated by several prominent conservative bloggers, including Ed Driscoll and Glenn Reynolds. The term has also appeared in print newspaper commentaries regarding the tension between the coasts and middle America.

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