Bloom failed to see big picture in attack on Iowa

By Katie Curran

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“No Walter, you're not wrong - you're just an a____.”

I can't avoid thinking about this silly line from “The Big Lebowski” as I read and reread Stephen Bloom's recent assault on my home state, my heart and soul, from my New York City apartment.

Bloom's issue seems not to be with the hick-ish Iowa he describes in The Atlantic essay but with rural America as a whole. If his issue with Iowa's influential political station is born of lack of diversity, I encourage him to explore all 3 million person pockets around our country and find that none, including my own in Brooklyn, can be satisfactorily representative of our country as a whole.

If Iowa's pocket influences national political opinions, I fail to see why the same process would be more legitimate elsewhere. While he brings to light issues that are worth discussing, he fails to bring into context that these issues are not specific to one state but representative of a country in turmoil. Iowa does not exist in a self-perpetuating bubble that can be ignored.

Small-mindedness is not region specific. A large population does not guarantee it will be worldly, and that cultural exposure does not negate ignorance. Bloom fails to note that many choose to stay living in the places where they grew up not because they are uneducated addicts, but because it is what is good for them.

Leaving does not make me stand above anyone who lives where I grew up, and Bloom's transplant status does not give him an all-knowing lens. I expected more perspective and accuracy from someone who has (co-)authored works that tell beautiful and hard tales of common human experience. He lost this perspective, and let down the voices he made heard in past works by painting two-dimensional caricatures.

A Bronx-born colleague in New York asked me, “What could I learn in Iowa that I didn't learn growing up in the greatest city in the world?” My answer was always the same: You will learn about people. You will see a place and observe areas of expertise not found in the city, and then share your own.

Like living in New York, a visitor may not be warmly welcomed - anywhere that has a central cultural belief that doesn't fall in line with yours can be polarizing, and you as the outsider will be misunderstood. This is a flaw in our nation, not of one place.

I am unwelcome in the Hasidic neighborhood near my apartment, and cannot shake a Hasidic man's hand after signing an apartment lease with him. When I go home to my small town, many don't understand me, nor I them, and it isn't always welcoming. It's just as possible to be an outsider in New York as in Iowa, and while that experience is neither easy or right, it is certainly not unique.

The landscape Bloom paints is not wrong, but it is not illuminating. He has defended that journalism should shine light into dark corners, which I appreciate, but what good is a grossly misrepresented corner? If Bloom's culprit is ignorance in rural America, he could have named it instead of perpetuating it with uninformed stereotypes, driving to silence a people he has given voice to in years past.

I do not ask you to “love it or leave it,” Mr. Bloom, but I do request that you think about the full landscape before illuminating convenient parts, and recognize that the culprit is not Iowa, but an entire portion of this country that you have refused to understand.

Katie Curran, a Lisbon native and graduate of Luther College, is director of concert operations with Manhattan Concert Productions, producing events at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Comments:  katiercurran@gmail.com