Iowa Hate: Professor Stephen Bloom edition

UPDATE 3:30 p.m. 12/13/11: Hey, quit picking on poor Stephen Bloom! He doesn't like all the mean emails calling him names. He wouldn't do that to yoooouuuu.

Also, Raygun continues to be awesome.

Also, check out the Combat Blog, as Dan Brooks says it better than I can. #thnx

Original post:
This one is so hateful, even the Des Moines Register noticed.

When Obama spoke of those clinging to guns and religion, he was talking about the Iowa hamlets that will shape the contours of the GOP contest

Oh. Well. I didn't know we were fightin' dirty right off the bat.

*takes out switchblade*

OK. I'm ready.

The offender: Stephen G. Bloom (oh please, using your middle initial is like putting "esquire" after your name), a professor at the University of Iowa who has been here for 20 years. As any good Iowan knows, not being raised up here makes you an outsider, no matter how many years you've been here.

Wanna know how we came up with that logic? Because, no matter how many years you're here, you're still likely, at any time, to spew horse manure the likes of what you'll see from Bloom.

The offense: The entire article linked above. Really, if you wanna go read the whole bloated, rambling piece of what passes for "commentary" over at The (We Should Really Know Better) Atlantic, bastion of East Coast snobbery, and you've got about 20 minutes and a desire to be filled with rage and SMH giggle fits, be my guest. It's hideous. A snippet:

Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated[sic]) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that "The sun'll come out tomorrow."

It's no surprise then, really, that the most popular place for suicide in America isn't New York or Los Angeles, but the rural Middle, where guns, unemployment, alcoholism and machismo reign. 

Ho. Lee. Mackrel.

I mean, where to start, Prof. Bloom? In an article that, according to your wording, attempts to "explain to the geographically challenged a little about Iowa" (which, by the way, even geography nerds might not know about the geopolitical* challenges), you instead choose to cut down, rearrange and conveniently stereotype every part of your "adopted state."

*(word choice you actually meant)

The giggle fits come when he talks about things that, actually (OK, I've pointed out before that I am not a farmer,) can't really be true. When you walk by corn fields, you hear popping? Can anyone else verify this? (UPDATE: Corn does not pop.) Or was this just BB guns aimed at the holier-than-thou Bloom, who also claims that everyone asks if his dog (presumably, a lab) is a good hunting dog. Which, fair question, Bloom. Is he? Because if he is, he'd probably be happier running around sniffing out pheasants than locked up in your Iowa City abode all day listening to the Brahms you left on for him while you're teaching your courses.

What, I'm being unfair? I don't even know the dude? OK. But it's pretty clear he doesn't know me, either. More than once, he calls out my own damn hometown -- once as a "scuzzy river town" and another time, oddly, to make fun of its name. Its damn NAME. So, yeah. Gloves off.

Reached for response by the Register, Bloom is unapologetic.

For his part, Bloom, a visiting professor this fall at the University of Michigan, said that he’s merely engaged in unflinching journalism with foresight, similar to his 2000 book, “Postville.”

“I mention some uncomfortable truths in the story, some unconventional truths,” he said. “Maybe people are not accustomed to reading those kinds of things.”

Maybe Bloom is unaccustomed to having the entire populace of a state he's just unabashedly bashed ream him out. Did he not think we would? Cause we're all just a bunch of elderly, methed-out farmers who aren't actually representative of America?

Or maybe, Professor Bloom, it's because when people read lies, they want to call the person who is spreading such lies out. Lies like "Iowa sucks super hard, who wants to go there/let them pick a president in the caucuses/have anything to do with them? Amirite?" Because that's all East Coasters need, is another reason not to care/invest in us/move here. And that's all former Iowans need, is a reason to convince themselves not to come back here/bring their families back here.

And that's all we Iowans need, is yet another doucher telling us who we are, why we can't achieve and how depressing that all is.

I especially like blogger Rebecca McKanna's take on it:

Does my state have problems? Yes, it does. It has serious economic issues that need to be addressed and which your article suggests no solutions for. Does my state include some red necks and uber-Christians and people who think Michele Bachmann is swell? Yes. But my state also includes millionaires, Pulitzer prize winning authors, social activists, feminists, drag queens and many other types of people.

But hey, why bother with nuance? The Atlantic pays the same for slipshod journalism.