New York Times Reporter Anthropologizes Hometown, with Predictably Vapid Results

Cultural tourist cum NY Times reporter Michael Wilson writes an article about ultimate fighting (or whatever one calls it) in Sioux Falls, the city nearest where I grew up. The title of the article is “Alive and Thriving in the Midwest: Brawling in Cages.” From this article:

On June 4, promoters set up a cage in the gravel lot beside Sidewinder, a bikers' bar in Sioux Falls, and held 17 fights in a "Summer Slam." A cage fight is scheduled for a bar in the city of Yankton on Aug. 13.

"It's like the hardest core," said Jarod Stevens, 25, a beefy, freckled redhead who works at a Hummer dealership, signing up for his first fight on Saturday in Sioux Falls. "It's proving something to yourself, that you're man enough to be a part of it and do well, hopefully."

By the night's end, Mr. Stevens will be holding a bag of ice to a bluish lump on his forehead. And he will be one of the luckier ones, in 11 fights over two hours that include men who train daily and self-described street fighters. Former convicts will fight on the same card as a corrections officer at South Dakota State Penitentiary, who has been approached by his fellow officers looking to learn a few moves, in case things get rough at work. Three men will be knocked out cold, with the night ending awash in the bright, swirling lights of an ambulance . . .

(Later) Mr. Stevens, the Hummer dealer: "I'm not one of those guys who's going to back down from a fight. I've had six ribs broken. I've been knocked out cold at a concert."

The hardest core, huh, Jarod? Wilson makes you sound like an idiot, albeit an idiot with a very distinct code of honor. I thought the hardest core was that time in sophomore year at Washington High when you and your friends picked on those Somalians new to the school and country, terrorizing them for like six months before they fucking rose up on your pale, freckled ass gangland-style and pitched you headfirst into the urinal. Jarod is the Midwestern archetype who hits on a girl, is promptly deflected, and responds by calling her a cunt to realign the power relations. Jarod buys big things to compensate for being such a small person. Jarod may be a good guy, but Wilson, and by extension, the New York Times, succumbs to its culturally voracious appetite for human interest pablum and gives us beefy Jarod and an account of grown men (and women – Wilson neglects to point out that this Sioux Fallsian are egalitarian in their stupidity) beating on each other under cover of “entertainment.” Jarod and the fighters are free to do what they want, as is anyone with the desire to see blood spilled and bones broken. Wilson and his editors however, do not prevaricate so much as they caricature. I call bullshit on this.

The interesting story would be the Somalians: how Lutheran Social Services decided allocating funds for bringing minority immigrants from war torn countries was necessary, how those who are displaced have battled tooth and claw to find a place here, the basic and innate racism that has sprung from their arrival, and the social dynamics of a small town that has grown into a metropolis without likewise expanding its concept of who is included in the idea of “we.” Instead we get bars, blood, and “Brawling in Cages.” Maybe it was Stuart Hall, who knows, that said – I don’t care about your politics, how you vote on your own time, I care about the kinds of stories you tell. This story is an evasion of relevance, a cartoonish piece equivalent to eye candy and masturbating to Internet porn. It tells us nothing about a changing Midwest or the traditions and attitudes, some of which are positive, resistant to such change. Let us move on:

This is not quite the Sioux Falls that Money Magazine declared the best place to live in the country in 1992, not the Sioux Falls that has attracted Citibank and Automatic Data Processing Inc., a quiet, safe city of 141,000, where an average of eight new residents arrive each day and a laser-light show plays every night.

In this Sioux Falls, people are 19 and 20 and 21 years old and looking for something to do, anything besides some youth program at one of the city's 65 parks or another laser-light show. The timeless ritual of cruising, in a square of downtown called "the loop," was banned two years ago, when police officers started writing tickets after three nightly sightings of the same car.

The thing is, people in Sioux Falls ranging from 19 to 25 have always been looking for something to do. This is a non-story. 2 to 1 odds Wilson learned about the laser show from the Chamber of Commerce or Tourist office, because that’s what it is: a history of Sioux Falls, told in a baritone voiceover with embarrassingly dated laser show graphic. The loop is like forty years old; in the last ten years, if you were 23, and wanted to score some meth or commit statutory rape, then you went to the Loop. Otherwise, not so much.

So we learn that Sioux Falls is a small humble city filled with many stupid young people who need to be spoonfed entertainment that is not too complicated and comes with bells and whistles. They have found violence, welcomed it into their lives, and either bathe themselves in blood or live vicariously through those who do. Welcome to America. Let us know get some sense of the momentum all this bloodletting is getting.

First,

"I always say, 'Where's the rule book?' " said Vernon Brown, 37, a former television reporter who joined the Sioux Falls City Council last year and is a critic of cage fighting. "They keep giving me a sheet printed off the Internet that says no eye-gouging, no fishhooks, no fingers in bodily orifices."

He does not foresee banning the sport. His main concern, he said, is for the spectators in the potent mix of violence, alcohol and what he sees as lax security.

The irony here is rich. Vernon Brown specialized in exactly this kind of story: his range stretched from cat-caught-up-in-a-tree to local-girl-gets-national-attention-for-quilting-talent. How he got elected in the first place is beyond me, but the fact that his main concern is for the spectators – what, are they being desensitized to violence or something – is suggestive of the man’s qualities in general. He’s a cheesedick, plain and simple.

Wilson concludes the article by doing some series journalistic legwork i.e. talking to one of the people who find fighters in the first place:

Watching the fights near the cage was Damien Alexander, 30, the man who met the Hawn twins in Iowa and urged them to come and fight. Thinking back on that night, he said he does not remember seeing either of them beating a marine, but something had moved him to approach them.

As he sees it, cage fighting is poised to take off in Sioux Falls. "You know what we got? We got a bunch of bars and a state park," he said. "This is good."

So Wilson’s method is to find the talent scout for the event, who dishes out the immensely stale justification for semi-sketchy behavior: There’s nothing else to do, man. This is good, too. What would it mean if cage fighting “took off” in Sioux Falls? Do you think Damien the recruiter has some interest in seeing this happen?

See, the thing is, the Midwest is really a great big ball of interesting narratives right now. Entire counties in Nebraska are surviving on Social Security. Areas west of the Missouri River in NE, ND, and SD have been in a drought for seven years. Small towns are evaporating, while Sioux Falls, Fargo, and other outposts of small city life are being entirely remade. They are no longer as white, as middle class, or as static as they used to be, yet the boxstores and minimalls that are sprouting up diminish any sense of unique, place-based originality they may once have obtained. What’s depressing about Wilson’s piece of shit article is that it will offend the city fathers for all the wrong reasons. It will offend their sense of decorum, not their sense of justice. It will not catalyze reflection, but reaction. So what? I guess not much. Caricatures will continue, sensationalism will provide the template, and reporters will take 3 day junkets to write shallow, condescending pieces about lonely, loutish men and women who find solace or triumph or something about who they are by taking or giving a punch.