Fuck Iowa

I was fixin' (I'm learning the redneck language after all) to write a post about how fucked up it is that a bunch of undereducated loons get to pick the presidential candidates, but just noticed the Rude Pundit has already done it.

And I suppose that makes me "intolerant" because I think allowing stupid people to have such a big impact on choosing the candidates is a bad idea...

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 says.

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.

What they should do is have the top 5 states in population have their primaries on the same (first) day.. California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. That's a nice cross section of geography.

I think there's been a weird trend over the last 6 months or so where political blogs are becoming increasingly more boring - mine included. Daily Kos is basically just a poli-sci nerd symposium, and I don't understand why so many people read it. It's dull.. dull.. dull. I understand it's not supposed to be a tabloid, but I'm not really interested in the granular underpinnings of the political process.

Americablog has gone from primarily Aravosis writing every post, to an almagam of uninteresting writers. I enjoyed seeing Aravosis going after anti-gay bigots, but now I read the blog from top to bottom, basically only looking at the headlines and the first sentence or two. The posts, while being well meaning and probably important in the way that saving the whales is important, are boring and uninspired.

The vast majority of blogs seem to have become more "inclusive" by including more and more writers, while losing touch with what made them popular in the first place. There's a guy that goes by "Chris in Paris" that wrote 7 posts that are currently on the front page of Americablog. If Chris had his own blog, I wouldn't read it because he bores me. Now, with Aravosis spending more time doing god knows what, Chris and others are writing more and more posts. If I would not have read their individual blogs in the first place, why on earth would I continue to read Americablog if they are the ones doing all the writing?

Even Scott Adams blog has turned into a giant rat turd. It's a complete bore now.

There are a few that are keeping at it... namely Duncan Black (Atrios) and Glenn Greenwald. Black has an easier job as his posts tend to be very short, and mainly highlights other essays and makes a comment about them, but he is very effective in how he does it. People enjoy reading his point of view. Greenwald is just a machine.

And as much as Andrew Sullivan makes me crazy with his inability to "understand the point", he is consistent and continues to put out the same idiotic drivel that he has for quite a few years now. I've mentioned before that Sullivan is terrific when it comes to gay rights, but because he's a total bottom and likes other people to be the daddy, he's still an authoritarian slave, and writes like it. He even wrote (in reference to Obama), "know hope", again, after being derided in the blog-o-sphere with taunts such as "oh fuck you Obiwan" when he said it the last time.

I guess that blogging was a cool new thing to do, and we're seeing it burn out because there's really not much capital behind it, and because there's not much fresh and new, even though there's a big presidential campaign going on, and there's still a disastrous war in Iraq.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the medium, but I'm having my doubts that it'll replace the MSM by any meaningful measure. I imagine some of the larger blogs will continue on, but the thousands and thousands of "tier 2" and lower blogs will fade away as the writers figure out that having readers is cool.. but it's not that cool. There are probably new and better things to do somewhere.