By now there must be dozens of full-length responses to the offending article. Those responses come from such notable corners as the Columbia Journalism Review and The Washington Post, and the headline is, "University of Iowa journalism professor kicks unlikely and 'frankly frightening' hornets' nest."
Ask his students if anyone really "gets" Steve Bloom
Anybody who has ever spent time in Iowa knows that the last thing the place is, is a hornets' nest. It's full of calm, collected, clean people––with the totally understandable exception of game days––who are proud of being forthright and slow to anger. If it ever seems like a boring place, it's because Iowa is perhaps one of the most normal places on Earth.
––Which is precisely what makes Bloom's article so damned amazing: It has managed to really piss these people off.
Not every claim Bloom makes in his Atlantic piece is absolutely 100% accurate (as more than one Iowan has noted in the comments section of the article's online edition), but a lot of Iowa is rural. Some of it is crumbling and Podunk. Corn grows. People eat pork and think highly of Jesus. But Iowa's also exceptionally verdant, tidy, and toy-bright. Barns are uniformly painted lipstick red, lawns and men's hair are cropped close as golf greens, and people tuck in their shirts.
The insider truth is that Iowans accept Iowa's contrasts without remark––the green of the corn and the blue of the sky, calloused hands and fresh linens, a disconcerting mix of progressive and conservative––and expect the same from the rest of us. The only thing that could upset such staid and placid folk is a half-truth. They ignore the lie that Iowa is flat or that its people are stupid (no man knows his business quite like an Iowan) or that it's secretly Idaho, but Steve Bloom's half-truths are simply more than respectable people can turn their backs on.
Bloom's take-down of the Iowa caucus tries to prove that Iowans no longer represent mainstream America, but in so doing he painted a picture of Iowa that Iowans themselves swear they don't recognize. And just like punk rock, the more some finger-wagging, latte-sipping, city-dwelling liberal tries to define you, the more you're likely to rebel against his definition. As one Iowan mentioned on my Facebook wall, "Reading [the article] the whole time I felt a square peg / round hole vibe when I looked at my own life here."
This is where most of Bloom's haters miss the point. Of course, they're justified in their quarrel with his depiction of their home, but Bloom's comments about "scuzzy" towns and corporate farms are just set pieces in an argument over whether Iowa can, through the caucus, continue to lay claim to being the "real" America. The bulk of America's population now lives in the 'burbs and on the heavily urbanized coasts, as do the media corporations that are increasingly the masters of public opinion.
Outside the world of Pace sauce, New York is the new Real America
There's a general consensus that the Iowa caucus plays a disproportionate role in the Republican nomination process, playing into the hands of the social conservatives who make up that party's grass roots. Like a Frenchman wearing a beret or Africans with bones in their noses, the Iowa farmer showing up at a caucus with his hog and flannel shirt is a quaint anachronism that defrauds political discourse. In a much more recognizable Iowa, that farmer might make his entrance in a coat and tie, just like everyone else in America.
The irony is that in order to debunk Steve Bloom, Iowans will first have to debunk the image of Iowa the media presents to the rest of America through the spectacle of their caucus.
The irony is that in order to debunk Steve Bloom, Iowans will first have to debunk the image of Iowa the media presents to the rest of America through the spectacle of their caucus.
No comments:
Post a Comment