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.

Experiments in Democracy and Zoom

My screen during Pints and Politics event. I had some issues dealing with the Gazette link--and the monkey is here to say "something went wrong." Iowa is seeking a new motto for it's welcome sign, maybe the computer has supplied a timely slogan: Something Went Wrong.

On Feb. 25, a week I ago, I tuned in to view a “Pints and Politics” panel discussion put on by the Gazette.

They do these now and then, and I’ve been to one before. However, Thursdays tend to be busy days and nights in the academic universe, so sadly I often have to miss these. But I viewed this one and enjoyed it.

Erin Jordan of the Gazette moderated, and Todd Dorman, Adam Sullivan and James Lynch, Gazette writers, were joined by Kassidy Arena of Iowa Public Radio.

The panel talked about the freak winter storm in Texas, Iowa education bills and election reforms pending in the Iowa legislature.

It’s been a week—I’ve been busy—but here are some of my notes from the program:

Best quote: The panel spent much of its time describing some rather strange and anti-democratic ideas in the Iowa legislature—ending tenure, a protection of free speech, in the name of free speech; tightening election rules to stamp out nonresistant vote fraud; rushing through important bills with minimal feedback partly due to a failure to create safety rules during a pandemic—it was a discussion of a legislative session in which one party has run amok. Adam Sullivan, I thought, had the quote that summed up the spirit of the discussion: “States are supposed to be the laboratory of democracy, but they are running some messed up experiments.”

James Lynch had interesting points to make, but also provided the séance moments of the event, as he sometimes froze. I noted that he used a background that had the Gazette name—but it appeared backwards, to me.

A bill that would tighten election rules drew much of the discussion. The bill moved through the legislature at breakneck speech, and Kassidy Arena noted that it did so at a time when many Iowans are reluctant to go to the Capitol—where the GOP leaders have not mandated masks.

That points out what to me is one of the oddest things that has happened in recent politics. Iowa’s governor has relaxed rules as infections, while dropping, remain higher than they were for much of 2020. In Texas, in the week since this Pints and Politics discussion, the governor there cited mysterious “matrices” in announcing an end to state mask mandates.

Is he drinking the same Matrix vodka that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has been drunk on for the past year? Somehow Reynolds sees matrices none of the rest of us see. Not it has spread to Texas like a bad virus. Matrix delusion--the new GOP affliction.

Back to this event. I enjoyed my own beer as I listened, yet I appreciate that Jordan said the Gazette may try some social-distance in-person events this summer. I would have to pay more, but I'm OK with someone bringing me my drinks. Assuming I have a shot by then—and not of whiskey, of a vaccine—I would like to go.

I also thought Arena was a good guest panelist and hope she attends again.

Kassidy Arena of Iowa Public Radio during event. All  images on this post are screen shots of the Gazette event.

I also kind of miss Zoom. Yes, I know, they used Zoom for this event, but I was viewing it indirectly, not via a Zoom link. At an earlier Gazette discussion featuring photographers, the chat in Zoom was an interesting adjunct to the discussion. This event lacked that chat feature, and I missed it

Of course, given the political nature of this event, it’s possible that chat comments easily get out of hand, and maybe The Gazette knows that from experience. As I say, I have not been able to attend these all that often.

I enjoyed this one. Still, the men in the panel, at least visually, all had some trouble—James had the backward background and froze; with his t-shirt and unruly hair, Dorman looked a bit like he was being held hostage in suburban Marion (with COVID-19, I suppose he sort of is); Sullivan had a mantle sprouting from the sides of his head.

From a nicely decorate cell somewhere in Marion, a hostage speaks.

The double X’s in the crowd, in contrast, opted for contacts if they needed corrective eye lenses, had their hair comparatively under control and seemed to have more of a sense about their backgrounds.

As far as the optics go, men, the woman are making us look like slackers. What else is new?

Anyway, apt final word to Dorman, who made a point about the pandemic: “As long as we can get beer and streaming services, we’ve proven over the past year that we can make it.”

Or maybe to Jordan, whose final sentence cut out and finished on these segue words: "until then."