I realize I've been talking about this for a while, but not getting you what I promised. But I was working on a review of Thomas Frank's new book this weekend for an academic journal and put some thoughts together. Your comments are welcome. Maybe I can even find my picture with me and Frank (a very nice guy, but a very nice guy who, I think, is also very wrong). Review of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004) can be read here in Word: Download reviewFRANKkansasBLOG.doc Excerpt from review (sorry about the font jumbling, another downside to typepad):
While an entertaining read and a genuine attempt to account for liberalism’s troubles, Frank’s book suffers because he assumes too much. He believes the various complaints at the core of the conservative revival since the 1960s, what Frank dubs the “great backlash,” are misguided. Frank questions the notion “that the haughty hedonists of Hollywood are largely Democratic,” (119) doubts the claim of “liberal bias in the news,” (123) and wonders if there really are “commissars of political correctness” stifling open exchange. (125) Frank questions the narrative of Vietnam veterans “being victimized by betrayal, first by liberals in government and then by the antiwar movement, as symbolized by the clueless [Jane] Fonda” and is skeptical of the impact of the “Vietnam syndrome.” (229-30) Frank also makes sport of conservatives in the middle of the country for worrying about “plans for depopulating the Great Plains so that it can be turned into a gigantic national park.” (125) The problem for Frank’s argument, however, is that for each of these claims—the Hollywood-Democratic Party axis, the tendency of liberals to dominate political reporting (fears of which were validated for many by the Dan Rather/“60 Minutes” fracas), the continuing ability of Vietnam experience to paralyze liberal foreign policy makers—there is deep well of supporting evidence. Despite his dismissal, it is also true that liberal professors (urban planners, no less) have advanced a plan to return the Plains to the buffalo to great acclaim (which he does not mention). Frank does not provide evidence that the assorted claims of the “great backlash” are untrue. He assumes they are.
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