If you've bothered to venture into the hard-hitting, policy-oriented world of the traditional media lately, you may have heard something about Obama's much-discussed 'Arugula Scandal'. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically the big summer sequel to the popular John Edwards vehicle, The $500 Haircut. ABC's 'serious' political blogger Rick Klein predicted on Saturday that Obama's 'arugula problem' would be a big factor in last Sunday's debate, and if you've run into a Republican troll recently, you've surely heard that Obama has proven himself an 'elitist liberal that is out of touch with America.'
Even Clinton, usually so hesitant to degrade the level of discourse, cough, has jumped into the fray. This week, Clinton strategist Mark Penn bolstered the Senator's anti-establishment cred by asserting that, "It symbolizes [Obama's] appeal to elites." If you've been lucky enough to avoid all of this, Newsweek sums it up as follows:
On a sunlit Friday afternoon in July, Barack Obama stopped by Beverly Van Fossen's farm in Adel, Iowa, to speak about "rural issues." It was standard Hawkeye State stumping—until the senator took a stab at sympathizing with farmers whose crop prices have stagnated. "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" he asked. Unfortunately, Adel isn't exactly arugula country.
Haha! Stupid Barack Saddam-Hussein-Satan-Hillary-Soros Obama! Don't you know that Iowans are too stupid to know about a nationally known brand whose ridiculous produce prices have been frequently covered by national media outlets? I mean, at this point, it should be common knowledge that Iowans don't know about anything that exists outside of Iowa, and that all ethnic-Iowans maintain a strict diet of pork-on-a-stick, RC Cola, and wood shavings.
Of course, the real problem here isn't arugula, it's media bias. While this was no doubt a naive inexperienced rookie (and possibly socialist) mistake on Obama's part, one at least on par with the time he provoked a nuclear war by asking Pervez Musharref if he'd ever been to a Chuck E. Cheeze, it's not a mistake that only Obama has fallen prey to. As a matter of fact, several candidates have made fools of themselves by assuming that Iowans have basic knowledge of anything that exists outside of a 100-mile radius of Des Moines.
Two weeks ago, Romney nearly ruined his Ames plans by referring to 'Massachusetts' in a stump speech. As any Iowan will tell you, there's no such place as 'Massachusetts' in Iowa, and as Romney's meager 32% showing in the straw poll confirmed, Iowans aren't keen on heretics telling them that human life can survive beyond the edge of the world (also known as the cliff a few miles east of Davenport). In the aftermath of a similar slip-up, Republican caucus-goers walked away dumbfounded from a Giuliani campaign appearance in which the former Mayor spent the entire time making the bizarre claim that 'the world changed' on that September morning when Seamus Jenkins got himself a new dairy cow. I mean, yeah, it made some decent milk, but even in the most pro-bovine corners of Iowa politics, that's not enough to ground a foreign policy.
Of course, the biggest unpublicized fumble came from Senator Clinton herself, who attempted to argue that she was the most experienced candidate when every Iowan damn well knows that she emerged fully-formed from Tom Vilsack's skull earlier this year. To her credit, Clinton has since adapted her stump speech to accommodate for Iowan's complete ignorance pertaining to pretty much everything, but the disproportionate coverage of this gaffe, as compared to Obama's arugula scandal, clearly exemplifies the media's tendency to only report on events that fall within pre-defined narratives.
As the race heats up, we know we're going to hear the arugula issue brought up over and over again, but will we hear about the other candidates' disrespect for 'common' Iowan culture? Will we hear about Thompson's attempts to explain that he's not really District Attorney Arthur Branch? How about Richardson's outrageous claim that there's actually a 'new' Mexico? And will we ever hear about McCain's insistence on traveling around in a horseless wagon made of magic iron? Probably not. The 'elitist Obama' angle was already determined before this campaign even began, and no matter how many candidates assume that Iowans aren't total morons, the traditional media will not cover anything that contradicts their established narratives. Then again, to be fair, it would probably just confuse 'regular Americans' if they did.
