“the quaint “retail” settings of Iowa diners and New Hampshire living rooms are treated mostly as media sound stages”

…in general, the quaint “retail” settings of Iowa diners and New Hampshire living rooms are treated mostly as media sound stages, places where reporters report on how many other reporters showed up (see above). As a result, these scenes have become backdrops for set pieces that blur into an anesthetizing noise: So-and-so has been to Iowa five times; some other so-and-so is “thinking about” running for president; and here’s yet another picture of yet another so-and-so looking a voter right in the eyes and telling him the truth about something or other, as the discerning voters here insist.

Mark Leibovich, “I ♥ Iowa”, The New York Times Magazine (3 August 2014), 13.