Calm Yourself: What Would Mel Brooks Do?

By ART CULLEN

A congenital optimist, or so he claimed on social media, had turned to despair over the superficiality of our politics and civic life. I know the feeling — the despair part. The Iowa Legislature is in session. Stupid can be funny. It’s something to hang onto while you get through hard times.

Such as, Republican legislators breaking out into singing the Star Spangled Banner while attempting to require every school kid to sing it every day. Beverly Sills could barely master the tune. Laura Belin, the Bleeding Heartland blogger, fought for years to gain press credentials and finally got them after suing the House clerk. So she could witness this? Imagining the scene makes me laugh.

They’re so hung up about sex and sexual identities they can think of little else besides getting rid of income taxes and higher education. Conversations in the cloak room among a bunch of sexually frustrated guys with beards must be tittilatingly absurd. What would Mel Brooks say? I think he already did in “Blazing Saddles” when he portrayed Gov. Petomane (which in French means “farting maniac”).

First, God gave us fools for laughter. So laugh.

There is much to fret about. Gov. Kim Reynolds wants to disable the Area Education Agencies. She will not give up on harassing gay and transgender people, an unhealthy obsession. Legislators are trying to undermine colleges because they teach people how to think critically. Eliminating the income tax will create big problems. Iowa has been on a rightward lurch for many years that makes International Falls look halfway attractive in February.

Take heart. Average Iowans are planting their flag — Our Liberties We Prize, Our Rights We Will Maintain — and are fighting back. Special ed moms are not to be trifled with. They organized, crowded the Capitol and overwhelmed legislators. The House threw out Reynolds’s bill to gut the AEAs. The governor with a tin ear is not going quietly on the issue. That should be entertaining.

Likewise, a House committee scotched a bill that would strike civil rights protections over gender identity following intense criticism of citizens flooding the Statehouse.

Legislators noticed that the Moms for Liberty got their hats handed to them in city and school elections last fall across Iowa. We would prefer that our moral peccadilloes are not hung out by politicians. We are, at root, disturbed by book bans and distorting history. The pendulum swings right and back toward center.

Reynolds is not having her undisputed way. Legislators see how weak she is, with the humiliation Ron DeSantis suffered following her endorsement. Rep. Megan Jones, R-Sioux Rapids, does not appear to be shaking in her boots over threats to primary her for standing against gay discrimination.

Also recall that Warren County voters ran off the county auditor for being an election denier. This in a county that voted heavily for Donald Trump but did not buy into the Big Lie.

If your child were gay, or in need of speech therapy, or you don’t want to be a member of the Youth Brigade, you might just shake Iowa off your boots. But people are staying and fighting for their rights, and for what this state could be. They got some of the worst ideas so far killed. There are plenty more bad ideas, like restoring the death penalty. But there are cracks exposed in the right-wing architecture that are being exploited. Many Republicans understand that they might have gone too far in their culture wars.

In Washington, the House is set to reject a Senate border security compromise. It makes clear that the GOP wants to maintain a dysfunctional system in perpetuity for political purposes. Voters will come to digest that, with the help of the Biden campaign. They want solutions, not more pointless argument. The GOP could lose the House over it, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fears keeping his title because of it. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the old Republican war horse, said he wants to hold up a bipartisan bunch of tax breaks because it might help Joe Biden. It is so bald it is funny.

Embrace the absurd. The MAGA core is melting down over a woman wearing a sequined garter and a Kansas City Chiefs jacket. Who thought Taylor Swift could strike such loathing just by hugging Travis Kelce’s mom in the skybox? It could swing the election if not the Super Bowl, they chatter. Great stuff. Wait ’til we get to the part when Trump attempts to deliver the inaugural address in absentia while wearing an ankle monitor. We got it all: sex, love, a neutered mob boss, a plodding attorney general, a teetering incumbent and great masses wanting someone’s head on a pike.

And, we have self-correcting democracy still. So far. It is working at a certain level in Iowa where we appear to be retreating from some of our worst excesses. If you can appreciate the satire you can find your way forward, or laugh at your despair.

Art Cullen is publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2024

Populist.com