Unearthed: The First Draft Of Steven Bloom's "What's The Matter With Kansas Iowa"

His final and slightly more polished piece is posted at The Atlantic or you can check out what he really thought from his first draft, uncovered by Iowa's own, umm, Iowahawk.

But seriously, save yourself the trouble of the published piece and go read his first draft:

On Iowa's western frontier lies the Missouri River, which girds a huge, sparsely populated agricultural region anchored by Sioux City (pop: 83,000) in the state's far northwest and Council Bluffs (pop: 62,230), across from the Nebraska hub of Omaha. Eskimo Pies, the original I-Scream Bar, was invented by a Danish immigrant in Onawa, a tiny town not far from the Missouri, and today you can visit an Eskimo Pie display at the Monona County Historical Museum there.

This concludes our break into folksy quaintness. Now it is time to resume our deep journalism dive into the psychic chasm of this rustic hell on earth.

In between the two great, garbage-clogged rivers, Iowa is a place of bizarre contrasts. The state is split politically: to the east of Des Moines, Iowa is solidly Democratic; to the west, it's rabidly Republican. Bizarre enough for you? Well. hold on to your hat because Iowa's two U.S. Senators are emblematic of this progressively solid vs.rabies-infested-evil Jeckyl-and-Hyde schizophrenia: Fundamentalist Republican Charles Grassley and Ultra-liberal Democrat Tom Harkin. Grassley is a decrepit 78; Harkin is a youthful 72. How's that for top-notch journalistic contrast?

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