Iowa Hate masquerading as a glowing portrait of our state isn't as easy.
But you can spot the code words: "humble" (they never do anything worth talking about), "quaint" (old-fashioned, behind-the-times) and "polite" (you can walk all over 'em). Armed with those, plus a nice little tone of "oh, we're just beginning to make our home here for a temporary time/maybe permanently, just moved from the Big City, oh aren't these mums so BIG and BEAUTIFUL, we could NEVER grow these in our rooftop garden plot in Brooklyn, could we, darling?" -- and you've got yourselves some patronizing Iowa hatin'.
The offense: The entire article at The Rumpus, a literary online magazine for the literary minded who like literary things and live or are familiar with San Francisco, the better to get the myriad inside jokes the publication posts regularly. (Dear Sugar really is their saving grace, but.)
Here's the lovely introduction, from an article on the Occupy movement coming to DSM:
Des Moines isn’t known as a hotbed of activism. It’s not known as a hotbed of anything really — except perhaps butter cows and caucusing on presidential election years. Iowans practice a fierce moderation in all things, particularly their daily lives: an exciting Saturday starts with a trip to the Farmer’s Market, and if you’re not there by 9:00 a.m., you’ve missed the good stuff (so I hear). The major industry is insurance, which has kept the local economy from feeling most of the effects of the recent downturn, and the real estate bubble never really inflated here. Politically, Des Moines is almost the anti-Austin: Austin, Texas is a blue city in a state of red; Des Moines resides in the most Republican county in the state–but is represented in Congress by a conservative Democrat.
The offenders: Amy Letter and Brian Spears, presumably a couple, who -- I'm quoting from the bottom of the article -- say they "moved to Des Moines this past summer" and "are preparing for their first real winter." (DISCLAIMER: One time, hoping for some freelance work, I emailed Spears [then-poetry editor there, and maybe he still is] and asked about the pay for reviewing poetry books, which they had advertised -- after he said it was precisely nothing, I politely declined. And that is the entirety of our "relationship.")
I assume Spears and Letter really do mean to showcase the ol' Occupy movement. But ugh-ugh-ugh, the patronizing is patronizing, and I gotta
Break it down:
"Des Moines isn't known as a hotbed of activism" -- OK, Letter/Spears, again, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt (and assume you didn't much research this assumption) because you're not "from here," but let me just tell you that, yes, actually, Des Moines and lots of other towns around it in Iowa have, indeed, been sort of hot-bed-y. For a long time, actually.
Off the top of my head, I can think of Muscatine's Alexander Clark, who won the right for his daughter to go to her neighborhood school 100 years before Brown v. Board; or Iowa being only the third (and first Midwestern) state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law (that's whites and blacks marrying) in 1851. It was among the first to allow women to own property and was the first state (that's out of the whole United States, bt-dubs) to admit a woman to the bar to practice law. (ooh, we let the womenfolk be activists, too?)
Oh, and there's that whole gay marriage thing. Wonder how that came about. Surely not because of activism, and even if it was, it definitely didn't have anything to do with Des Moines.
So if that's "fierce moderation," then right about now I'm practicing fierce apathy. Moving on.
"Has kept the local economy from feeling most of the effects of the recent downturn" -- don't make me recap this for you. Moving on.
"Politically, Des Moines is almost the anti-Austin" -- what? Are you trying to say that Des Moines is a red city in a state of blue? First of all, most political folks see Iowa as a swing state, going from blue to red and back again as the wind blows. While Eastern Iowa is more blue, Western Iowa is very red. Central Iowa, where Des Moines is located, is really the swing factor. Secondly, Iowa's "blue territory" is concentrated in -- surprise, surprise -- its urban population centers: Quad Cities, Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, Waterloo/Cedar Falls and - weird - Des Moines, where the city tends Democratic.
But beyond the incorrect line, what Letter/Spears are really trying to say is that Austin -- imperceptibly cool, live-music friendly, hipster paradise Austin -- is exactly what Des Moines is not. Where Austin attracts a liberal crowd to a conservative state, Des Moines is supposed to be a conservative hotbed? In a liberal state? I think you're thinking of San Diego.
In reality, Des Moines is politically complicated, and -- just like the rest of Iowa -- not only capable of thinking through the issues and deciding based on the evidence (the markers of a good swing state), but of making decisions before the rest of the country because it's the right thing to do. Which doesn't make Des Moines the moderate anti-Austin, or whatever. It does make them activists, in the truest sense of the word.
Occupy Des Moines? I'm surprised we didn't think of it first.
