A purple/split personality state

By Joel Snell

---

Now that the 2012 campaign has started, this usually happens: Candidates or major national reporters gush over how many times they have flown over Iowa, the purple state with a schizophrenic representation in Washington.

Wow! That's right. Iowa can't be confused with Ohio or Idaho. Further, we are schizophrenic. Why? Tom Harkin is a progressive Democrat and Chuck Grassley is a conservative Republican. Further, we are purple - mix a red Republican and a blue Democrat together and that's what you get.

All of the above is useful, but wrong.

Wrong?

Originally the left was red and the conservative blue in Europe.

By the early 20th century here in the United States, the colors were flipped, then flipped again, and the networks went bananas when color television was added.

Finally, the late Tim Russert, a beloved NBC reporter, laid down the law in 2000. Blue is for the Democrats and red is for Republicans.

Iowans vote for candidates of both parties quite frequently.

When I was a kid, red meant left. Richard Nixon won a Senate race over Helen Douglas, “the pink lady.” In other words, she was a commie because she knew communists. Pink meant you were really soft on reds and you probably were one but law enforcement could not prove it. So pink was a smear job.

Sen. Joe McCarthy started all of this and I lived through it. If you were a red, that meant trouble. On the other hand, blue did not mean much except for blue movies that were seedy and shown in the tough part of town.

In high school, I could have been labeled a red because I won a trip with 20 others from the Midwest, we went to Canada, New England, Washington D.C. (capitol, White House and the Soviet “Red” Embassy.) So it would be guilt by association.

When I got home, the postal worker wondered why I was getting “Soviet Life.” I didn't know except that I was registered as attending the Soviet Embassy. The magazine was a spin job of how wonderful life in the USSR was.

So Iowans remain purple, but the colors should be flipped again. Red is left. Blue is right. (It has been this way for hundreds of years and has a universal tie with the rest of the western world.

No, we are not schizophrenics. We are split personalities, if you want to mix the psychiatric labels with the political. How those two terms have been mixed up may be traced to the movies “Three Faces of Eve” and a “Beautiful Mind.” Both were box office hits.

Briefly, a schizophrenic generally hears voices and sees images that do not exist. A split personality has two or more personalities.

The Harkin/Grassley division triggers the comment of schizophrenia, when we really have (politically) split personalities. Got that? Now you know who you are!

When someone from the outside world comes to see us, as they do every four years, just say, “Look, I am an Iowan, not an Idahoan, or an Ohioan. Politically, we are purple-split personalities. I am fine. How are you? What is your question?” They look at you funny and you say “I am just trying to straighten things out for you. We aren't schizophrenics.”

Joel Snell of Cedar Rapids is professor emeritus of social science at Kirkwood Community College. Comments: snelljennifer47@hotmail.com