There's many, many reasons to despise the Iowa caucus. Gail
Collins and Christopher
Hitchens have covered the fucktardery of the entire process, a backwards ass clusterfuck of meetings where about 10-15% of the voting shit kickers of Iowa - who, we are constantly told, are kind, decent, thoughtful people, really, it's true - drink coffee, eat donuts or homemade brownies (because decent, kind farm folk make their own goddamn brownies, you urban assholes), and talk about who should be their party's nominee, voting until there's a winner in the room.
This comes after months and months of what can only be described as a kind of competitive brainwashing that enriches the local TV and radio stations (most of which are owned by giant corporations elsewhere), and makes the residents, the 90% or so of voters who don't give a flea's fart about the caucus, dread going to a downtown diner for the gut-wrenching fear they might be forced to shake hands with some damn Romney or Clinton. And the increasingly desperate-for-a-story media, who will hype anything, including the latest security cam video of a purse snatching or Paris Hilton's snatch, treat this like it's Sparta versus Athens.
Fuck Iowa, man. Fuckin' Iowa's the reason John Kerry became the nominee last year (which, by extension, means it's the reason, at least in part, that the nation is so Bush-fucked). And fuck Iowa for being so goddamn filled with its inflated sense of self-importance that its parties moved their puny damn caucus up to January 3. And fuck everyone who pumps up Iowans into believing they deserve to be kingmakers.
See, the Rude Pundit's problem with Iowa is one of
demographics. Iowa's white, so very, very white, 91% white. 2.5% black, 3.8% Hispanic (not counting the number of illegal migrants who harvest in those archetypal farms). In other words, Iowa ain't us. The attention to the Iowa caucus is based on a myth of America, a lie that hasn't existed in decades, maybe even a century or two. It is a vestige of the rightness of whiteness. It ain't about the way that good, decent, hard-working blah-blah-blah American citizens think. It's about what that isolated island of white people say.
Oh, sure yeah, there's a great deal of good in citizens going to gathering places and talking about who might be the next president, no matter where it happens or who is doing it. People should do it more. But just because they do it doesn't mean it matters to anyone who isn't in that classroom or townhall or wherever. It really ain't
news that "they came together on a snowy night last week to get up the courage to caucus" for Mike Huckabee. If that's what passes for courage these days, then, hell, when the Rude Pundit decides to go to the independent coffee shop instead of Starbucks, it must at least qualify for "strength of character."
Essentially, the whole nation is now forced to wait to see what the shit kickers of Iowa have to say. It's like everyone gathering around the Thanksgiving table and when stroke-victim Grandma starts to slurringly, slurpingly speak, the rest of the family grows silent to hear what she thinks of the meal. And if you agree with Grandma just because she's Grandma, goddamnit, then the Iowa caucus might be meaningful to you. But if you nod and smile and say, "That's fine, Grandma. Pass the gravy," then you are ready to grow up.
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