The man who dares speak ill of Iowa

Posted at 10:41 AM on January 3, 2012 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Regional history

It's been a month since journalism professor Stephen Bloom penned an article for The Atlantic revealing all he knows about Iowa, which from the reactions of most Iowans, may not be as much as he thinks.

It's been a debate that's been every bit as entertaining -- maybe more so -- than the humdrum work of electing a leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.

Bloom has had some time to think about what he wrote, and he isn't changing a thing.

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Comments (4)

Looks like Professor Bloom won't be getting the rural caucasian elderly christian meth-head alcoholic hunter vote!

If he hates Iowa so much, why doesn't he move to North Korea. Or Cuba. Or Minnesota.

Plenty a dark heathen city slicker types in them places I bet.

Posted by Jim Shapiro | January 3, 2012 11:50 AM

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A nice observation that goes along with the fact that 91% of Iowa is white is that all of those featured in the video are white.

Posted by BenCh | January 3, 2012 12:11 PM

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So, let's see... move someplace, experience professional success there for a couple of decades (getting a paycheck from a state-funded institution no less), write a long article in a national magazine which seems to be a long bitch about how backwards and generally crappy things (and people) are in your adopted home, then say you are "surprised" when people respond negatively.

He calls it satire and parody, but what was he satirizing or parodying? That seems like a bogus excuse to me, especially for someone who claims to stand by every word. That he is surprised by the negative reactions he's getting is pretty astounding in and of itself. Perhaps he thought nobody in Iowa would stop reading their tracts or drunkenly gutting deer long enough to notice the article at all. If they did see it, surely Iowans' infantile level of reading comprehension would render his masterful prose an impenetrable, and thus inoffensive, fog of polysyllabic enigmas.

In an interview with Jim Romanesko Bloom says:
"There is a long, proud American tradition of the kind of journalism I practice. It involves humor, parody, satire, observation, and reporting. It goes back to Findley Peter Dunn (who coined the expression I live by as a journalist, “the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”)"

If Iowa is as bad as he says, it sure sounds like he's doing everything he can to "afflict the afflicted" with his article, and there's scant comfort to be had save for those who seek to have their view of Iowa as backwards flyover country snugly tucked in.

In short, there's really nothing new here, just another foreign traveler writing to the capital about barbarism in the provinces.

Posted by Andrew S | January 3, 2012 12:36 PM

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Ken Fuson's response to the piece in the Des Moines Register was pretty funny.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20111220/OPINION01/312200041/1024/OPINION/?odyssey=nav%7Chead

If I were Bloom I wouldn't return to Iowa. Not because of fear or threats, but because it sounds like he really hates it there.

Posted by Andrew S | January 3, 2012 12:41 PM

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