Pulse of the Heartland: Peoria yearning for the middle in a nation of angry extremes: ‘It just makes your heart sink’

Downtown Peoria pictured through the autumn foliage last week. (Mitchell Armentrout/Sun-Times)

Will it play in Peoria?

Vaudeville entertainers are believed to have been the first to pose that question when scripting their acts in the early 1900s, thinking if the material went over well with crowds in a traditional heartland city such as Peoria, it’d probably land with mainstream audiences across the country.