Nebraska, Iowa Governors Plan Lunch to Salve Hurt Feelings
If Iowa and Nebraska were countries instead of states, both would by now have angrily called their ambassadors home for “consultations” and relations would be very frosty.
Instead, the states’ governors will meet later this week in a neutral corner — Kansas City — for a private lunch during which they hope to smooth over ruffled feelings.
It all began with an advertising campaign mounted by the Nebraska Tourism Department meant to entice Iowans to visit Nebraska’s scenic attractions. The problem was the ad’s headline.
“Does Iowa Smell Bad?” the headline asked.
The rest of the ad copy never answered the question. In fact, the ad had nothing to say about how Iowa smells, good or bad. It was devoted entirely to touting Nebraska’s scenic wonders.
“We just wanted to be funny, to get people’s attention in the very crowded media space that inundates us all, including people who live in Iowa,” explained an official in the Nebraska Tourism Department. He admitted to being “dumbfounded, just plum dumbfounded” by Iowans’ angry reactions.
“We thought they would laugh,” said Avery Longbottom, the Nebraska civil servant who conceived the ad campaign. The ads ran in several Iowa newspapers before being yanked after Iowa state officials cried foul. “I’d like to think we Nebraskans would laugh if they ran the same ad that asked if Nebraska smells bad,” Longbottom said.
Perhaps they would. Nevertheless, Iowa newspaper editorialists were suitably indignant on behalf of their state’s residents.
“The prevailing winds in this part of the world are from west to east, so we Iowans have known for generations — for a century and a half, in fact — what kinds of smells bear down on us from uncouth Cornhuskers. They aren’t pleasant,” a Des Moines Register editorial writer wrote.
The headline on the news story the Register ran on the affair expressed further outrage. “Gaseous Emissions from Nebraska Politicos Tell the True Story of Who Smells Worse,” the headline read.
Many who live outside both Nebraska and Iowa couldn’t help weighing in.
In Washington, Clean Air Now pointed out that both Iowa and Nebraska are among the nation’s top polluters in terms of methane emissions from livestock per square mile. Both states are members of what the USDA calls the “seven cattle feeding states” –Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and California.
“When it comes to stinky, Iowa and Nebraska are right up there at the top of the list with their smelly methane emissions, which blow eastward leaving a odoriferous trail of air pollution,” Clear Air Now said in a statement. “Instead of arguing about who smells worse, they should join together and do something about their general bovine stinkiness and set a livestock methane emissions standard for the rest of the country.”
Likewise, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who has campaigned against bovine flatulence for years and annually proposes a tax on gaseous bovine emissions, used the Iowa-Nebraska spat to push his anti-flatulence campaign.
“As I have said many times, it’s imperative that we Americans confront the role that farting, whether of human or agricultural animal origin, plays in degrading the quality of life for all Americans,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor. He called again for a federal tax on dishes served in restaurants that contain any meat derived from terrestrial mammals that emit methane as part of the digestive process.
Food companies and special interest groups as diverse as McDonald’s, Yum! Brands, and the Texas Association of Barbecue Joints oppose Kennedy’s anti-flatulence campaign. Texas beef producers and barbecue restaurants contributed more than $300,000 to President Bush’s presidential election campaign.
During the campaign, Bush made a point at several Iowa rallies to declare that “Iowa cattle and hogs should be free to emit whatever they want in whatever amount.” The line always drew enthusiastic cheers. Any cattlemen present would toss their grimy baseball caps into the air as a punctuation mark.
The governors of both states were expected to send prime cuts of beef and pork from their states to Kansas City’s famed animal protein chef Arnold Toynbee, owner of Amino Acids restaurant. Toynbee told the Des Moines Register that he would “delight their carnivorous palates and sooth their ravaged feelings” with the meal he was planning.