The Day After My Last Lawrence Post

I swear to god I haven't moved to Lawrence, Kansas or anything. Just because I posted a Lawrence story yesterday doesn't mean I can't post another today. So take that, Jason Robards!

Anyways. Thomas Frank has a new book out called "What's the Matter With Kansas?". I've loved Frank since I first picked up the Baffler; he's a got a keen mind that can cut through the bullshit and lay the moral issues bare. In a just world, he'd be the public intellectual du jour and writing op-eds for the Times instead of that ol' factless hack David Brooks.

The subtitle of Frank's book is "How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." Using Kansas as an example for the country's larger turn, Frank talks about how radicals keep getting elected, and what they do once they've got power.

"The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off," Frank wrote. "Vote to stop abortion, receive a rollback in capital-gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization efforts. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs rewarded in a manner beyond imagining."

There's a short excerpt from the book here, and the Lawrence Journal-World's audio interview with Thomas Frank is here. (All this thx to Bookslut)