I have nothing against Iowa - have never been there, but my husband has family from there so I will undoubtedly end up out there someday, and I am interested to see what it's like.
I will just say honestly that both he and his cousin (his cousin actually grew up in Iowa, my husband did not; he visits fairly often but grew up in Canada and the Northeast US) do kind of poke fun at their home state. They do it in that way that only natives are allowed to do; just as I make fun of New York but nobody who isn't from New York is going to get a free pass to do it, unless they've visited and we can commiserate.
May I humbly submit a funny story though? Husband's cousin, before husband and I were anything more than friends, moved to our area and we all hung out often. I was driving with Cousin one day, around Halloween. We passed a scarecrow and he was all "What is that doing there? There is NO REASON for a scarecrow to be in that person's back yard? WHat the he**?"
Me: "Dude, calm down. It's just a Halloween decoration."
Cousin: "People use scarecrows as Halloween decorations?! Why??"
Me: "I have no idea, maybe because they're scary and autumn-y?"
Cousin: "But scarecrows are used to SCARE CROWS, that's why they are called SCARECROWS."
Me: "People still use scarecrows to scare crows?"
Cousin: "Yeah...otherwise the crows eat the corn. Duh."
Me: "So basically in Iowa, they never use scarecrows as Halloween decoration?"
Cousin: "No. Never. That'd just be weird."
We were laughing so hard that he could barely drive, so we had to stop the car. Talk about culture shock!