Disliking Iowa

Not quite American Gothic, but appropriate nonetheless. 

This photo is 10 years old; I finally have an excuse to repost it.

Three weeks ago, Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa, penned a scathing profile of the people and geography of Iowa in the online Atlantic.  The resulting brouhaha was picked up by the AP, which described the piece as painting "Iowans as uneducated Jesus freaks who . . . don't deserve the political clout," and it generated a volley of responses within The Atlantic and in the Columbia Journalism Review, questioning Bloom's integrity and telling Iowa "to lighten up."  The President of the University of Iowa was strongly offended by her professor.  My Facebook feed lit up with people rising to defend Iowa; my own blog post about the article generated more comments than I've received in the last three months.  The mayor of my hometown offered to give the good professor a "first-class tour" of the "Iowa's front porch."

It's hardly surprising that most Iowans would react negatively to what was largely a hit-piece against their homeland.  What was surprising, to me at least, was that I found myself perturbed that Bloom's largely negative opinion of the place was foundationally different from my own.

Usually I'm the first to agree with any criticism of my home state.  I fled Iowa at my earliest opportunity and go to great lengths to avoid returning for more than the odd holiday or two a year.  I feel strangely ill at ease here, but my Iowa is nothing like Bloom's.

As others have pointed out, Bloom's portrait of rural Iowa ignores the reality that most people in Iowa, like most Americans, live in urban areas.  While I grew up in the middle of a cornfield, I live outside of a city of a hundred thousand.  Nothing in Bloom's article offended me; instead, he left me wondering how a professor could develop such a shockingly stereotypical view of the state while earning tenure, living inside the state's cultural mecca for two decades.

But Bloom did serve as a motivator to try to wrap my mind around why exactly I dislike Iowa so much, without resorting to suggesting it's because everyone I come across is a meth addict with a farmer's tan and a penchant for eating dinner and supper.  The best I can come up with--after thinking on it for far too long--is that the pleasures of Iowa break down whatever cultured facade I've attempted to develop over the past decade.  

As it was put to me the other evening, the pace of life in Iowa is slower, more relaxed.  Life is simpler.  Life is less of a production.  It also seems far less concerned with the sorts of political and policy concerns with which I pretend to occupy myself.  In Iowa, so long as I feign interest in the next Hawkeye game, if I spent the rest of my life in a basement bunker playing video games, I daresay I wouldn't be too out of the ordinary.  

I know that sounds pretentious; it probably is pretentious.  But if I'm not in the city where the opportunity to view an exhibit of Degas or watch a national security panel discussion exists, I resort to a default position of falling into a catatonic state in front of the television.  That's what Iowa is to me.  Note that such an existence is not bad per se.  Hell, it's actually something I'd enjoy a good deal, but it's doesn't feel particularly rewarding to me.

The other night, during the first of two, largely impromptu discussions prompted by Bloom's article, a good friend challenged our group to list things we actually like about Iowa.  It seems we're all fond of the various varieties of pizza products the state concocts and the lone drive-in movie theatre within a fifty-mile radius.  It was a pathetic exercise, and it only reinforced how weirdly generic my Iowa is.  For everything bad about rural Iowa, at least it has a sort of culture missing from urban Iowa.  

Urban Iowa is an endless series of chain malls and unmemorable sports bars.  Neighborhoods have all the personality of larger suburbs.  My Iowa is the Iowa where the local coffee shop where I'd spend my Saturdays sketching closed due to lack of business.  Where the only independent movie theatre shutdown, as well.  When friends try to list off all the "culture" Davenport has, I see a county fair with no butter cow but a lot of drunks.  I see the Bix Beiderbecke jazz festival slowly turn into, again, another excuse to congregate in the otherwise empty downtown and drink cheap beer.  The Village of East Davenport, the so-called historical district in town, once had book stores and an old time toy story.  Now, it's little more than a string of bars, serving as an excuse to drink cheap beer.  

During the second discussion prompted by Bloom's article, my old debate rival, now a small town prosecutor in the middle of nowhere, seemed to endorse Bloom's view of rural Iowa.  Mocking the subsidy-dependent "fiercely independent" farmers, he regaled me with stories of how his county of a few thousand resented Des Moines "for getting in their business" and the "Socialist Republic of Iowa City" for having latte-drinking vegan students while at the same time embracing pedophiliac farmers and statutory rape "so long as it produces grandkids."  I'm not sure if he was joking, but he seemed pretty sincere when he suggested his trips back to Davenport were like returning to civilization.

All I know is some people love where they come from, are proud even of it, and that must be a wonderful feeling.  But as I'm hardly a nationalistic patriot or someone who could even get up to root for the home team in college let alone high school, I don't look upon my origins with any sort of nostalgic longing.  My good friend said one of the many pluses of Iowa is that "it made me who [I am] today."  I just rolled my eyes and laughed.

Perhaps I'm just too smug and arrogant for Iowa.  Maybe that's just my nature, no matter how nurturing this place has been to me?

Video Games as Art

Due to the job search and the bar exam, I haven't made much time for video gaming this past year.  With my absenteeism, I'm in no position to recommend any game of the year to the wider internet, but my outsider's perspective so-to-speak has made me realize that video games took a large step toward presenting themselves as "artwork" in the past year.

Whether video games can properly be considered "art" has been a frequent if pointless debate for awhile now.  This upcoming March, the Smithsonian will be exhibiting the art of video games, and after looking over the slate of artistically-inclined games released in 2011, there's never been a better time for an exhibition on the subject.

In the past decade, the race to produce better and better-looking video games has produced experiences like Call of Duty which have rapidly morphed into the interactive equivalent of Michael Bay summer blockbusters.  This year, however, a number of high profile games also attempted to experiment with different visual (and audio) stylings.

Bastion.  The debut game by Supergiant Games (and my personal game of the year), Bastion is a lushly hand-drawn adventure where the player literally rebuilds his world.  The game consists of solid button-mashing gameplay reminiscent of classic Nintendo games, but it's the game's presentation that is most memorable.

The entire game is narrated by a gravely-voiced old man known as the Stranger.  Real time narration was done to good effect previously in 2003's Prince of Persia, but Bastion nails the look and feel of playing an interactive childhood fairy tale.

Combined with some seriously soulful music, and you have an experience that shouldn't be missed--and it's just $15 dollars (and playable within a Chrome browser, too!).

Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Human Revolution is a follow-up (and prequel) to 2000's Deus Ex, and it continues the tale of dystopian Blade Runner-esque future.  Like every game on this list, the game is wonderfully scored, but it's how the game visually presents the future that I found most remarkable.

The dystopian future is not a new concept, but Human Revolution puts a new twist on things visually by blending Renaissance-era trappings and cyberpunk imagery with a distinct color palette:

The gold represents, you know, the Golden Era, the Renaissance, the cybernetics, the human side. Gold is an earthy tone, like gold is from the earth, right. The black is the dystopic side. Also, put together it’s a really rich palette that games haven’t really used yet. - Jonathan Jacques Belletete, Art Director for Deus Ex Human Revolution.

And the final product is remarkably black and gold, so much so that modders worked double-time to remove the color filter on the game, producing a remarkably different visual look:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution copyright 2011 Square-Enix.  Image from Kotaku.

Beyond the audio and visual trappings, Human Revolution also presents a vivid world where the player can choose how to negotiate most any encounter.  Need to get past a locked door?  Charm your way inside.  Or break open the door.  Or pick the lock.  Or pick the key from the landlord's pocket.  

Rayman Origins.  Video games have long tried to emulate the "look" of a Saturday morning cartoon.  In 1983, Dragon's Lair presented a minimally interactive cartoon experience, kicking off the quest to merge the lush animation of a cartoon with the interactivity of a game.  Ten years later, Disney's work on Aladdin showed how game designers could join talents with traditional animators, and another decade later, the cel-shaded Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker came close to capturing the look of cartoon.  Yet Winder Waker was still very much a video game with a clever coat of paint.

Rayman, a goofy, limbless character created by French designer Michel Ancel, has finally accomplished the goal of putting the player into an interactive cartoon.  To animate the game, the developers built a special animation engine known as the UBI-Art Framework to bring Rayman Origins to life:

El-Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.  I haven't had the pleasure of playing this eclectic Biblically-inspired action game, but based on its quick reduction in price to just $20, gamers clearly weren't prepared for the imaginative mishmash of Biblical metaphors, Judeo-Christian iconography, and choral music:

"My approach to creating El Shaddai's visual style was, in some ways, a journey of personal discovery," Takeyasu told Ars. "Because I was tasked with illustrating a world unlike anything that anyone living on Earth has seen, I knew that I had to forge a visual identity that was not completely based on an existing style. First, some of the ideas come from deep within my own head. I've been dreaming of directing a game for a very long time, and some of the more abstract or surreal ideas that might not have fit in a more traditional game were finally able to express themselves in El Shaddai."

Pac-Man El-Shaddai ain't.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  Since taking off for the holidays, I have managed to put a good ten hours into the latest Zelda adventure.  While the game isn't without its faults--it's functionally the same game as 1992's The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the game's symphonic score, a first for the series, and painterly pastel visuals are a delight.

Inspired by French impressionists, the clever use of shading and blurring helps disguise the fact the game, running on the Nintendo Wii, is using ten year-old hardware.  In early still shots, I thought the game looked almost bland, but Skyward Sword is a joy to behold in motion--and play:

All-in-all, a remarkable year for the artistic development of the video game industry; now, I just need to find some time (and funds) to play everything!

More Observations on Iowa in the Atlantic

Lynda Waddington provides a good explanation for why Stephen Bloom's piece has been so irritating to the average Iowan.  She describes the "bless his heart" syndrome and transplants it to Iowans:

That is, in the South, it is generally acceptable to say pretty much any thing you like about a person provided you follow such an observation with "bless his heart.". . . Provided in such context, the statement offers truth tinged with affection -- an acknowledgement that no matter what we may think of each other, how spattered another's life might be when viewed through our eyes of experience, we still understand that a certain level of respect for a fellow human is warranted. Bloom broke the rule.

Bloom's article has been a lightening rod in my home state.  Every local paper seems to have letters to the editor railing against Bloom.  Forwarding that article to friends elicited more responses than a genuine update on my life.  I even received more comments on my blog post about the piece than I have in months.

Waddington's "bless his heart" syndrome provides a sensible explanation and an intuitive one.  Mockery can be accepted when it comes from a place of concern rather than one of derision.

I (should have) learned that lesson last year when my first impressions of Istanbul were less than kind.  Being critical simply for the sake of having a cynical point of view evokes a strong reaction in anyone who disagrees.

That's fine if one wishes to be incendiary and provoke a reaction, but Bloom ostensibly was attempting to provide outsiders with a glimpse of the Hawkeye State prior to the caucuses.  Without illuminating any of the state's good qualities, he insulted his adopted home and gave everyone outside of the state precious little beyond reinforcing negative views of rural America.  That likely plays to readers of The Atlantic (I love the magazine!) but it stunts any real debate.

But I have to thank Ms. Waddington from saving me from having to recount Iowa's many good qualities. I'm not sure my coastal sensibilities could have stomached it, I typed with a smug smirk on my face.

Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life

From this month's Atlantic comes this feature by Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa, about life in Iowa.  He appears to be trying to provide some context about the state to outsiders ahead of next month's caucuses, but if the comments are any indication, reaction is negative.

One commenter suggests Bloom is "arrogant, smug, and judgemental. Everything that people [Iowans] resent of 'coasters.'"  Another suggests his observations are largely "navel gazing inside an ivory tower that happens to be in Iowa."  However, one Iowa resident defended the piece as "the most accurate, and beautiful, description of Iowa you'll ever read," calling the state a "time capsule" of bygone values and customs be both loves and hates.

I think that's about right.  I am not one to ever defend a life in Iowa.  Like so many of my peers, which Bloom details, I fled the state for the lights of the Big City at my first opportunity, and I've never wanted to return.  That said, for all the many factoids Bloom gets right (I swear, soda is POP!), there's something about his piece that rubs me the wrong way.

Perhaps it is some lingering sense that an outsider is tarnishing my home?  I dislike succumbing to such tribalism, getting thin-skinned as someone catalogues amusing anecdotes of my flyover country, but Bloom's article has forced me to consider my own thoughts on Iowa. Like him, I wonder why "a schizophrenic, economically-depressed, and some say, culturally-challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president," but I look at Bloom's description of the caucuses and cannot help but smile:

On January 3, Iowans will trudge through snow, sleet, sludge, ice, gale-force blizzards -- whatever it takes -- to join their neighbors that evening in 1,784 living rooms, community halls, recreation centers, and public-school gymnasiums in a kind of bygone-era town-hall meeting at which they'll eat and debate, and then vote for presidential candidates along party lines. Chat 'n' Chews, they are called.

Iowa may be 96% white (or rather 91% caucasian), religious, and rural, but isn't this how everyone, coasters-included, want our democracy to look like?

Inopportune Jury Duty

I've been eagerly awaiting a summons to jury duty for years.  Maybe it's the lawyer in me, but the prospect of sitting on a jury is incredibly exciting to me even though my education likely would serve to get me struck well before that point.

So after scoffing at friends' reluctance to serve, I received my notice last week.  In Iowa.  For a date in the middle of January.  When I will be working in Washington.

With a pained look on my face, I submitted a request to be excused from jury duty.  Hopefully it'll be granted since I lack the funds or the time to take a discretionary trip to Iowa in the middle of winter.  Yet I cannot help feeling a bit embarrassed and saddened.

I may be one of the few people in America who wants to serve on a jury, and for the past six months, I have had nothing but free time in which I could have served.

Perhaps one day instead of a being drawn from some opaque lottery, citizens will have an option of simply showing up at a jury pool on a day off.  I know I'd be eager to go.

Team Joe Returns

The Adventures of Team  Joe "Number 10"  © 2006-2011

I was something of a megalomaniac as a child, so much so that when I was ten years old, I started my own fan club.  I drafted my poor friends to be members and set about doing all the things my brain thought required of a fan club.  Principally, this meant I decided to draw a comic.

A non-sensical comic, inspired by any cartoon and video game I came across, featuring ridiculous caricatures of me and my friends, shooting fireballs and beating up sorcerers and aliens.  From 1994 through 1998, I put together eight issues of my flagship The Adventures of Team Joe, along with a number of equally bizarre comic spin-offs.  Looking back over it all, I'm both proud I was able to doodle so much (and maintain straight-As, of course!) and embarrassed by the size of my ego.

By the time 1998 rolled around, I was more interested in girls and getting a social life than creating a comic book with no consistency in plotting or style.  However, this was around the same time as I became exposed to real live Marvel comic books, so I decided to go out with a bang!  A two issue spectacular, drawn on "real" comic book boards, with proper pencils and inking pens, to conclude with every last member of Team Joe fighting for truth, justice, and, uh, me in a final tenth issue.

I got a dozen pages into issue nine before high school left Team Joe to collect dust in a box upstairs.  In tenth grade, I wrote an essay in my English class resolving to finish this project before my junior year.  It wasn't until 2006 when I was jobless after college that I stumbled across the unfinished pages of Team Joe #9.

In my boredom, I thought it might be fun, for the sake of completion, to write up a more "realistic" final issue.  It would feature a Joe ten years removed from his fireball-flinging, dragon-slaying youth, now something of a non-entity, going on misadventures with his college friends.

For the first time in years, I brandished a pencil and doodled a collage of characters from my life circa 2006.  By the time I finished the drawing, I again had abandoned any notion of actually doing a full comic book, but I swore I would at least color my cover to Team Joe #10 and throw it up on a website.

Then I got a job.  Then I realized, once more, how painful it can be to color things in Photoshop on a track pad.  Before I knew it, I was in law school and this drawing reflecting my life post-college was already years out of date.  A massive, scanned file of the image sat on my hard drive for five years.

A few weeks ago, my friends surprised me by getting me a drawing tablet, and I again resolved to finish to finish this project.  A real drawing tool in my hand, I could finally finish a drawing I started on a whim five years ago.  

Thus, Team Joe returns.  For one drawing.  In one blog post.  While I'm thrilled at how busy and colorful the finished product turned out, my skills of an artist have faded, and again, I'm almost embarrassed to show this to the world (or the handful of readers who stumble here).  But my silly creation provides a remarkable snapshot of a period of my life, and this dumb drawing is perhaps the only thing to come out of the back half of 2006.  So here's The Adventures of Team Joe #10 on December 10th, five years after I late.

Is JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon giving something extra to the IRS?

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, complained about all the rich-people bashing, and tried to put things in perspective:

"Most of us wage earners are paying 39.6 percent in taxes and add in another 12 percent in New York state and city taxes and we're paying 50 percent of our income in taxes," Dimon said in defense of his fellow Wall Street bankers.

One problem.  The top tax bracket is not 39.6%.  It's a flat 35%.  So here's a deal top earners: if we raise taxes to what Mr. Dimon actually think he's paying, maybe we can stop criticizing Wall Street for its excessive greed.

In 2010, Mr. Dimon only had a base salary of $1,000,000.  On top of that, he earned a $5,000,000 bonus and several hundred thousand dollars more in "perks."  Then there's the tens of millions of dollars in exercised stock options Mr. Dimon received last year—capital gains taxed no where near 35%.

"Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad — I just don't get it," said Dimon at the conference, which was organized by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 

Median household income sits at $50,000.  I just don't get it either.

Osawatomie: Obama's Wonderfully Wrongheaded Speech

Today, President Obama gave a wonderful speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on the dangers of income inequality and the need to bolster the American middle class.  It was chock full of the inspiring rhetorical flourishes which rallied so many to then-Senator Obama four years ago.

"Inequality also distorts our democracy," the President said. "[I]t leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them."  He implored everyone, from Wall Street to Main Street, to play by the same rules.

And then he wasted his time and energy criticizing Republican obstructionism and "calling for legislation" to strengthen anti-fraud laws "so that firms don’t see punishment for breaking the law as just the price of doing business."  Gestures that will neither appease the President's critics or accomplish much of anything.

Four years ago, this speech might have inspired me.  "Aha!" I would have said, "The President gets it!"  He does get it: he knows full well the Republicans in Congress will do nothing to strengthen financial regulations.  It's empty rhetoric.  It's partisan pandering.

If the President were serious about sending a message about equality, his Administration would be knocking on Wall Street's door, SWAT teams in the rear.  In the current political climate, the President's best way to send a message is to rely on the levers of power within the Executive Branch to get things done.

On that count, the President has done next to nothing to make Wall Street play by the same rules as Main Street.  The SEC covers up the crimes of Wall Street banks.  His Justice Department actively works against states trying to place legal pressure on the financial sector.  The FBI's "Operation Broken Trust," an effort to combat financial fraud, absurdly targeted "penny-stock frauds, a husband-and-wife team charged in an insider trading case and mini-Ponzi schemes."

Not a single solitary criminal case has been brought against a big-time corporate official.  No one on Wall Street was even aware of Operation Broken Trust.

The President can blame Republican intransigence all he wants, but as he accepts millions in campaign dollars from the financial sector, he ought to look in the mirror, as well.  There is little doubt that there is broad-based bipartisan support among Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Street protestors for increased policing of Wall Street.

The President simply hasn't done that.  He's implored the banks to behave better.  Asked Congress to toughen some laws.  And done nothing to combat the rising tide of economic inequality generated by crooks on Wall Street.

(Legal) Blogging to Death

From Shit Law Jobs comes this ridiculous job posting for law firm blogger:

Law Firm with multiple websites needs an articulate person with strong writing skills to help with high volume blog entries for each of the Firm's websites. Goal is to reach 700 - 1000 blog entries by the end of December working part time Tuesdays and Thursdays 9am - 5pm. If this goal is reached or exceeded work hours will be increased based on accomplishment. Pay scale is $8.50 per hour. Writing samples will be necessary to interview for this job. If you do not have your own writing samples, please be prapared to bring sample blog entry to interview for one of the following topics: (1) Help With Warrants in Dallas (2) How Can a Traffic Ticket Attorney Help You (3) Caught Speeding in Dallas? Know Your Rights

Even before spotting the misspelled word in the post, I'm not sure this offer can be serious.  While I'd love a part-time blogging gig, I've been blogging haphazardly for almost four years and I have yet to even hit 700 entries, so I haven't a clue how anyone could hit that amount working sixteen hours a week for the remainder of the year.

Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice has an amusing write-up about how this posting suggests this firm has "thrown open the doors sufficiently to fund a full case of Cheetos."  Coincidentally, Volokh had a post today about how awful Big Law is at blogging, and this sort of comical slave driving suggests that law firms want an online presence even as they have no real idea how to go about accomplishing this.

In the meantime, I'm sufficiently dissuaded from looking for legal blogging work.

The Unemployment Chronicles, Part VI: Due Diligence

If there's one thing my extended unemployment, coming off what I hoped would be an economically beneficial law degree, has given me, it's a strong sense of humility.  If I ever thought I was something special, that's gone.  More importantly, as I've gone on interview after interview after interview, I've met one interesting, more accomplished person after another.  As I elaborate upon my resume to these paradigms of achievement, I can really only shake my head and chuckle.

On Friday, I interviewed with a conservative public interest organization.  Strange bedfellows, I know, but while the interview produced a number of awkward exchanges, I still came away half envious/half starstruck of the people scouring my resume and peppering me with questions.

Through some Googling due diligence, I discovered the organization's director is but a year older than myself.  He's already had much of the career in government oversight I'm interested in, albeit for the "other side."  And despite our relatively comparable periods of time together on this planet, he has experiences and talents I wonder if I will ever match.

Another staff member I interviewed with was equally impressive in her background.  Further, considering my pathetic blogging proclivities, her long-running and diverse personal blog was a revelation.  Her cautions about law school, written in 2005, could have served as an important warning to me in 2007.

But I suppose my notion of due diligence, or trying my damnedest to investigate all sides of an equation was not clear in my mind a half decade ago.  If nothing else, law school drilled into me the benefits of a thorough analysis of any situation.  It seems the result is that I pore over pros and con lists ad nauseam.  It's a delightful sort of mental paralysis--another assist in the heaping helping of humble pie these past few months have provided.

Friday Links!

Absent my posting of weekly links, I've returned to my bad habit of emailing my closest friends (and parents) any incendiary story I come across on the internet.  So let's look at everything I've sent over the past few weeks:

• My last Friday Links discussed the death of Google+, which Google engineer Steve Yegge elaborates upon in his accidentally leaked 4,000 manifesto about everything Google (and Amazon) does wrong.  
• Looks like spending my days with a laptop in my lap will make me sterile!  Hooray! 
• Further evidence that something is no right with our society: DHS and the FBI allegedly worked with mayors across the country to crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protests.  The FBI reportedly recommended "that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present."
• The New York Times' Roger Cohen concocts the "Doctrine of Silence." Evidently, the Obama Administration's "legally borderline, undercover operations" are somehow a better alternative than the Bush Administration's "appalling" public war on terror.  Mr. Cohen, ahem, you do the Watchdog Press proud.  
• This story is getting big play in legal circles for obvious reasons: in Miami, strippers are posing as paralegals at a Federal Detention Center.  
• Forensic specialists at Dartmouth have developed an imaging tool that can detect Photoshop alterations, because Cosmo covers are clearly untouched. 
• In my frequent off-time, I've been doing some research on behalf of SolitaryWatch, which tracks the treatment of prisoners in solitary confinement.  Despite 80,000 people are in "segregation," solitary confinement is an element of the criminal justice system that most Americans seem eager to ignore.  
• On a similar subject, my good friends sends me this harrowing photo essay of hospice care at a maximum security prison. 
• Since I will likely never be able to clear the debt I took on for the privilege of attending law school, it is good to know I'll be fed in debtor's prison, which is now legal in a third of the United States.
• A veteran and Call of Duty gamer gets auctioned off by his wife on Craigslist.  
• Alison Brie is amusing, even when she's talking about pooping.

Happy December, internet!