Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal

I don’t know what made the Wall Street Journal take such leave of its senses, but they went and hired a liberal columnist. That columnist is Thomas Frank, and his column today is about his book What’s the Matter with Kansas? and the media frenzy over Obama-Pennsylvania-bitter-cling:

Allow me to introduce myself. According to the general clucking of the national punditry, my 2004 book – “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” – is supposed to have persuaded Barack Obama to describe the yeomanry of Pennsylvania as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or . . . anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Mr. Obama’s offense is so grave that the custodians of our national consensus have elevated it to gatehood: “Bittergate.”

In truth, I have no way of knowing whether some passage of mine inspired Mr. Obama’s tactless assertion that the hard-done-by clutch guns and irrationally oppose free-trade deals. In point of fact, I oppose many of those trade deals myself.

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If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they’ve got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don’t care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I’ll fly the plane myself.

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