hi, we’re iowa, vanguard of equal rights in america. and you are…?
so here you are: a good and pious metropolitan liberal, holed up in your coastal ivory tower and luxuriating in the smell of your own cinnamon-scented farts, when your 3G mobile device tells you that one of those vowel states (“iowa”…is that the one with the potatoes?) is now one of only three in the nation that recognize same-sex marriage. facebook awaits your input. what to do, what to do? can you suppress the urge to belittle everything and everyone that isn’t within fifteen minutes of an apple store long enough to celebrate a historic achievement for equality and social justice? or do you take the opportunity to reference cow-tipping?
because blogging would be dreary and pointless if there wasn’t always something to bitch about, my jubilation over the varnum decision from this morning has been tempered a little (not much) by the persistent tone of know-nothing urban provincialism on display in the blurted remarks of some (not many) friends-of-friends in online chatter today. by way of illustration, a few comments overheard in the outer realms of facebookistan and twittervania over the last few hours:
“really? iowa??”
“wow, who would have thought Iowa?”
“You find common sense in the strangest places sometimes.”
“I never thought I’d have a reason to say “Go Iowa” – or even *think* about Iowa for that matter…”
“really, have you been to Iowa… besides cow tipping and corn picking – marriage is the most interesting thing to do – now everyone can. yay.”
let’s not even bother trying to plumb the depths of condescension and mock-astonishment among the NY and DC-based national media, who swallowed the red state/blue state kool aid years ago. suffice it to say, at this moment the number of heads exploding in the east village and the castro over the idea that whitebread cornfed little iowa has done what new york and california couldn’t do is at least equal to the number of heads exploding in sioux city and urbandale over the visual of two dudes making out in tuxes.
to help our urban betters wrap their huge enlightened heads around today’s news, here’s a brief history lesson. turns out iowa has a long tradition of progressive action, including but not limited to landmark legislation and court decisions, on civil rights and equality for minorities.
1839 – state supreme court, in one of the first such rulings anywhere, says a fugitive slave becomes free by setting foot on the free soil of iowa
1851 – iowa becomes the second state (after pennsylvania in 1780) to repeal racial anti-miscegenation laws
1868 – racial segregation banned from iowa schools 86 years before Brown and nearly a century ahead of the Civil Rights Act
1869 – first state to allow women to practice law
1873 – supco rules against racially segregated transportation & public accommodations
1948 – first lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement, 12 years before Nashville and 7 years before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Iowa supco rules against the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines, ending its policy of refusing service to blacks
is this whole post an overdetermined reaction to what were admittedly only a handful of off-the-cuff remarks by people i don’t even know? perhaps. am i defensive about this stuff? you’re goddamn right i am. i hear it all the time from people — liberals — who should know better. as far as i’m concerned, today is a victory for the long-maligned flyover as much as for gay couples.
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Thanks for a gratifying and absolutely necessary post. Don’t forget, though, that while coastal urbanites might ignore Iowa, it’s fellow midwesterners in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois who push the “Idiots Out Wandering Around” hick bullshit. And I’ve found that, at least in California, those who are the most outspokenly dumb about Iowa are usually transplanted midwesterners. Most native Californians don’t have anything against Iowa or the midwest; they just never think about it. That’s the very definition of provincial, of course, but somehow it’s hard to blame them; with the world’s fourth largest economy and 10% of the nation’s population, they rarely have any cause to leave California.
credit where due: there are plenty of transplanted midwesterners out there who get it. some of them even write for the New York Times:
Good point. I like to think that I’m one of those transplants who “gets it.” But I think we do need to recognize that probably the strongest voices against the middle of the country are self-exiled midwesterners who consider leaving their greatest achievement in life. If that’s the way you feel, you’re bound to portray your home region as a hellish bumpkinocracy that you were barely able to escape.
agreed, and props for the coinage — is “bumpkinocracy.com” registered?
one more gratifying newspaper column, this one from the Trib:
i thought the Daily Show’s spot was pretty uninspired too. no big surprise, but disappointing in light of how self-righteous Stewart has been on the marriage issue (the old “i understand teh gays better than you ’cause I live in Queertopia USA”).
Bill Maher also had a pretty gratuitous crack — something along the lines of “the gay community in Iowa was elated…both of them! but then they realized, oh fuck, we live in Iowa.” but he went on to acknowledge, in what I guess passes for a sincere tone coming from him, that Iowa had succeeded where California failed, and that Iowa is therefore, in fact, “hipper.” considering how smarmy and superior Maher habitually comes off, especially when talking about the hicks and goobers of middle america, it amounted to a pretty classy gesture.
Just a small thing: I finally saw The Daily Show‘s bit on the Iowa ruling yesterday, and another odd part about it was Jon Stewart saying something like, “Iowa is now more progressive than California!” Odd that he didn’t include New York there. Well, maybe not so odd, since he’s a member of the “New York Rulz, California Droolz” club.