The journalists gaze

And other links for your Sunday

Last week, a friend texted me from a restaurant. There were journalists at the restaurant in town for the caucuses and they were complaining about Iowa.

The restaurant is one of the best in the state, run by a James Beard-nominated chef. The food is incredible some of the best food I have ever had. The staff is wonderful. But the journalists sat there, complaining about how Cedar Rapids didn’t have Whole Foods (we have a co-op, which is arguably better since Whole Foods is run by Amazon), and how they were sure the vegan food wasn’t going to be vegan.

They talked about getting shots of wind turbines and the bucolic fields. Later, another friend who works there also texted me to tell me about these journalists.

A few friends who are journalists texted me when they got to the state. “We should hang out,” they say. “Let me know if you actually leave Des Moines,” I reply. Because I know they won’t, not really.

I’ve written before about what it feels like to see your state constantly refracted through the lens of political journalism — the warped sense of recognition, like seeing some AI-generated, yassified version of the worst of yourself in the pages of the newspapers and on cable television, when we are reduced to yokels with no oat milk, fields, and sound bites. We are just the background to a horse race. “What do Iowans think?” Political headlines want to know. But when you read the article they’re interviewing the same five people they interviewed last time.