Thomas Frank is a meditative person's Michael Moore. If Moore, a left-wing filmmaker, had Frank's Ph.D. (in story from a University of Chicago), he competence furnish books similar to this a single as well as Frank's previous best seller, "What's a Matter With Kansas?"
Illustration by Christoph Niemann
PITY THE BILLIONAIRE
The Hard-Times Swindle as well as a Unlikely Comeback of a Right
By Thomas Frank
225 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $ 25
Illustration by Paula Scher
As we can discuss it from a ham-fisted title, "Pity a Billionaire" is not a world's most subtle political critique. But subtlety isn't everything. Frank's best moments come when his contempt boils over as well as his middle grouch is released.
This book is Frank's understand of developments given "What's a Matter With Kansas?" was published 8 years ago. Frank's thesis here is basically which a thesis of a old book has been confirmed. He will not convince anybody who does not already buy a Tom Frank line. But those who do (as we do, some-more or less) will suffer a really great time carrying their predispositions massaged.
Frank infrequently writes in an physical condition voice which seemed informed when we initial encountered it though which we couldn't place. Then we read in his book-jacket bio which he writes for Harper's Magazine, as well as we thought, "Zounds, Watson, a male might have Lapham's Disease." The symptoms of this malady, named after a longtime editor of Harper's, Lewis H. Lapham (no! w of Lap ham's Quarterly), include an elevated, orotund, deeply mocking prose style that, in severe cases, reveals almost nothing about what a topic is or what a writer wishes to say about it solely for a general sense of superiority to everybody as well as everything around.
Fortunately, Frank's case is really mild. What he retains is a full of health refusal to be intimidated by charges of "elitism." He's not fearful to give his chapters titles similar to "Mimesis." (I looked it up. It's a great joke.) He says of some right-wing nut who enjoyed fifteen seconds of YouTube celebrity which he possessed "an understanding of German story which bordered upon finish fantasy." His message to liberals is: Oh, for heaven's sake, do not be so defensive! The alternative side (Republicans, financiers, business executives, billionaires) has most of a economic as well as thus political power. Today's conservatives wield reverse snobbery as a weapon, accusing liberals of sins similar to vital upon a East or West Coast. Frank mocks conservatives' claims which they are victims of an all-powerful magnanimous establishment. He calls this "tearful weepy-woo."
Meanwhile, things have gone from bad to worse. Conservatives go on their Sherman's march by a landmarks of magnanimous government, burning as well as looting as they go. They've gone after a legacies of Lyndon Johnson (Medicare), Franklin Roosevelt (Social Security; financial regulation) as well as Theodore Roosevelt (environmentalism). And operative people go on to be duped in to ancillary measures manifestly against their own self-interest. In "What's a Matter With Kansas?" Frank attributed this to a clever bait-and-switch by conservatives, who interest to middle- as well as lower-class electorate upon a basis of social issues similar to abortion as well as gays in a military, as well as values similar to patriotism as well as religion. And then they oversee upon a agenda of normal Republican groups similar to businessmen as well as bankers.
With "Pity! a Billi onaire," a emphasis is different as well as a reason is simpler: President Obama has tricked a electorate who inaugurated him. He ran similar to a populist, Frank believes, though he has governed similar to a plutocrat, or during slightest a crony of plutocrats. Frank quotes a remarkable passage from Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" about "people of means" whom he met during Democratic fund-raisers:
"As a order they were smart, interesting people, associating about public policy, magnanimous in their politics, expecting nothing some-more than a hearing . . . in sell for their checks. But they reflected, almost uniformly, a perspectives of their class. . . . They believed in a free market as well as an educational meritocracy. . . . They had no calm with protectionism, found unions heavy as well as were not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives were upended by a movements of tellurian capital. Most were adamantly pro-choice as well as anti-gun as well as were vaguely suspicious of deep religious sentiment."
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Bloomberg View.
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