Responses to Stephen Blooms article: I'm glad every Iowan isn't as sensitive as I thought.

Earlier this trimester, we read UI journalism professor Stephen Bloom's article posted in the Atlantic: "Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life." The article is Blooms opinion of the quality of life in Iowa, depicting is as a desolate wasteland with a failing economy inhabited by religious gun fanatics, meth addicts and old people. Overall, the article was very well written, and when I first read it I agreed with Bloom. While not ALL of Iowa is like what is described in Bloom's article, it isn't too far off. I have some extended family that lives in The Middle of Nowhere, IA. My first visit there gave me an opinion of Iowa that I never held before: we are a really boring and kind of culturally challenged state.
 I wasn't really offended by Bloom's article: we Iowans usually aren't surrounded by a group of foreigners that would ridicule us because we're from Iowa. I'm sure the article brought people a feeling of shame knowing that the place they call home is inhabited by people with "undesirable " lifestyles. I think the some most people were offended was because this was the first time they had heard any hardcore criticism of their home. Someone who had grown up in Detroit had probably spend their whole life aware of the crime-ridden stereotype the town has. If someone put an article out about how Detroit is a dangerous city, there probably wouldn't be a huge backlash because the citizens of Detroit are used to being criticized. Iowans didn't take this article lightly, and many people sent hate letters to Bloom.
In this recent Gazette Article, UI released some of the emails  people wrote to Bloom, some of which weren't as critical as I'd thought. My favorite email was the one sent by a Cedar Rapids language arts teacher, which made me think some teachers can actually be pretty cool.

He's kind of adorable, in a puppy sort of way.