Welcome to Iowa: I’ll Write Your Name

OK, the idea of a blank space that needs to be filled in on our state welcome signs put me in mind of Taylor Swift.

An aside about your media correspondent: He is a bit of a Swiftie. Things that put him in mind of Taylor Swift are not bad news, even if haters gonna hate.

Anyway, the Iowa legislature, trying to grapple with anything but the most important public policy questions of the day (pandemic, what pandemic?) has decided that Iowa’s welcome signs need a new motto. Right now, they say “Welcome to Iowa: Fields of Opportunities.”

From wikimedia commons, image uploaded to flickr by Jason Riedy, 2008 images of Iowa welcome sign.

And on March 7, an opinion writer for my local paper, The Gazette, published a column suggesting many new slogan ideas for the state. Todd Dorman is a good writer, and this particular column struck a chord.

The idea is too good for me to pass up. And although I mostly grew up in Iowa (my family moved here when I was 8) and have spent all but 8 years of my adult life in the state, I have to admit that most of the slogans that leap to my mind are a bit sarcastic.

Iowa, a land once known for excellence in public education and high literacy, has had a rough 40 years or so. Starting with the farm crisis of the 1980s the state has been culturally stagnating, and in recent years this open-minded land is becoming increasingly small minded.

So, while I love Iowa, my ideas for a new motto tend a bit more to warnings than welcomes:

• Welcome to Iowa. No Deep Fake Needed, Shallow Ones Will Do.
• Welcome to Iowa. Smell the Money.
• Welcome to Iowa. White Wonder Bread Land Of America.
• Welcome to Iowa. If You Have Ethanol in Your Tank.
• Welcome to Iowa. Land of The Free. Home of The Delusional.
• Welcome to Iowa. You’re Not from Chicago, Are You?
• Welcome to Iowa. We Don’t Need No Education.

The topic sent me from Taylor Swift to Pink Floyd.

Somehow, I don’t think I rival Dorman’s slogans. My favorite of his was “Iowa — Our Liberties we Prize and Your Reproductive Rights We Will Mansplain.” I also really like “Iowa — Home to Real Americans, and Iowa City.”

Dorman wasn’t all down on Iowa. One of his slogans messes with Texas: “Iowa — Our Windmills Don’t Freeze.”

Dorman's Twitter mug.

In a follow-up column this week, Dorman reports that the March 7 one drew a lot of reaction. In that recent column, after reporting ungentle suggestions that he leave his native state, Dorman got a bit serious, writing about the political changes he has observed in Iowa in recent years:

“What we have now is the least responsive, transparent and reasonable state government I’ve ever seen,” Dorman wrote. “We have a state government uninterested in listening to Iowans who are not their allies or donors. They shove bills to passage before the public can weigh in or anyone can fully fathom their consequences. They embrace ideas from out-of-state think tanks and bill mills while shoving concerned Iowans out of the way.

“Iowa veered so sharply right so quickly many of us got whiplash. The Republican Party in Iowa is far more ideologically rigid, extreme and radical than it was just a decade ago. It has embraced Trumpian cruelty, political vendettas and dishonesty over restraint and moderation.”

Unfortunately, Dorman is dead on. The great tragedy of Iowa is not just that it has turned from a politically balanced state into one that is calcified conservative, but that the brand of conservatism it has bought into features “Trumpian cruelty.”

I hope the pendulum can swing back, and Iowa can recover its historic middle-of-the-road politics.

In the meantime, all sarcastic mottos aside, I am grateful for writers with sharp wits who can keep and eye on the state of politics in this troubled state. “Iowa – If Dorman Left, we Would be Poorer.” We would be a bit more of a blank space.