These Iowa Caucuses create a seismic shift in the presidential nominating contests. Obama catapulted to the top of the Democrats’ dance card when he captured 38 percent of Iowa voters in 2008, and then swept to victory at the Democratic Convention eight months later. Without such a strong initial showing in Iowa, Obama might not have been able to steamroll through subsequent state primaries to win the presidency.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: This is the writing of the Vital Hack, the hack who’s read Hunter Thompson. The Vital Hack is Now; he’s Nervy; he’s Out There. Step aside, little lady. Coming through.

Yet why – given his supercharged metaphors – does his writing fail to achieve lift? Why, with all the weaponry (seismic catapults and steamrollers), the flaccidity? Why is this man failing to steamroll the Schoolmarm?

The Schoolmarm is more than happy to be steamrolled. But she finds men who try too hard a turn-off. In trying to get SOS going, this writer has simply ransacked his arsenal – which turns out to be everyone’s arsenal – and dumped all the weapons onto the page. As they clatter about, SOS suffers an empty feeling.

The passage pumps manfully away, but all it’s really got is a salade fatigué of clichés (swept to victory) and mixed metaphors (why would you get a catapult to reach the top – wherever that is – of someone’s dance card?).

(Check out the Google swept to victory page. Swept to Victory is the name of a horse!)

Anyway. Let’s put aside SOS‘s disappointment and focus on the larger notoriety of this essay, written by a transplanted urbanite who’s been teaching at the University of Iowa for a couple of decades. On the verge of the Iowa caucuses, he wants to acquaint ignorant ‘thesdans like SOS with his state, and his descriptions of life there have upset the locals. Many of them quote this sentence, for instance:

Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”

Sure that hurts. But what hurts more is how badly written this is. Note the (still-uncorrected) educated. Note again the besetting sin of this writer — the inability to edit himself. Do we need waiting to die? Waste-toids is great – why add meth addicts when you’ve already provided an exact description of them (pale skin, rotted teeth)? And Orphan Annie? Since you’ve said quixotic, why not stick with that? Man of La Mancha offers the same treacle. Choosing infantile Annie over noble Quixote is rather rubbing it in.

But really all you need in that last clause is this: who believe the sun’ll come out tomorrow. If you dump all the other shit – quixotically, Annie – the terse masterful sentence that results totally gets SOS in the mood. SOS likes a man of few words.