Breaking news: hell hath frozen over

By Kathy G.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Or at least a room of it, anyway.

By which I mean -- Thomas Frank has begun writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal opinion section.

Oh. My. God.

This development would be akin to Focus on the Family giving Amanda Marcotte a column in their newsletter. Or the Discovery Institute hiring Richard Dawkins as a senior fellow. Or PNAC bringing Noam Chomsky aboard as their new executive director.  Or . . . well, you get the idea.

If you're familiar with Tom's work, you know there is no one out there who is a more passionate champion of economic populism, or a more fearless, and hilarious, scourge of economic elites. That the Wall Street Journal opinion page -- the ultimate high church of voodoo economics and all other things wingnuttia besides-- has brought him onboard is a very interesting development indeed. A while back -- was it last year, maybe? -- when the WSJ's one and only liberal columnist, Al Hunt, retired, he was not replaced by a liberal. And at any rate, Hunt was the kind of milquetoasty liberal conservatives like, not the kind of firebreathing lefty likely to drive up their blood pressure, as Tom is.

Those of us with long memories may recall that, back in the 80s, the WSJ did publish a column by an actual lefty, Alexander Cockburn. But the fact that they replaced him with a "let's make nice" sort of liberal like Hunt, and then replaced Hunt with nobody -- well, that seemed as good an indication as any of the increasing marginalization of liberals not only in the media, but in American life as well.

That the WSJ has brought Tom aboard is a fascinating, and highly encouraging, development. They see the writing on the wall, and they know they can't ignore liberals anymore. The country really does seem to be coming around to our point of view, at long last.

I predict that Tom will have monocled plutocrats across the land choking on their morning coffee, pounding the kitchen table in red-faced rage, and fainting dead away from the sheer shock.

To get the flavor of what Tom's writing is like, here's an excerpt from his first column, which addresses the "Bittergate" controversy:

Ah, but Hillary Clinton: Here's a woman who drinks shots of Crown Royal, a luxury brand that at least one confused pundit believes to be another name for Old Prole Rotgut Rye. And when the former first lady talks about her marksmanship as a youth, who cares about the cool hundred million she and her husband have mysteriously piled up since he left office? Or her years of loyal service to Sam Walton, that crusher of small towns and enemy of workers' organizations? And who really cares about Sam Walton's own sins, when these are our standards? Didn't he have a funky Southern accent of some kind? Surely such a mellifluous drawl cancels any possibility of elitism.

It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America – the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one – perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world – the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity – become jes' folks, the most populist fellows of them all.

But suppose we read on, and we find the news item about the hedge fund managers who made $2 billion and $3 billion last year, or the story about the vaporizing of our home equity. Suppose we become a little . . . bitter about this. What do our pundits and politicians tell us then?

That there is no place for such sentiment in the Party of the People. That "bitterness" is an ugly and inadmissible emotion. That "divisiveness" is a thing to be shunned at all costs.

Conservatism, on the other hand, has no problem with bitterness; as the champion strategist Howard Phillips said almost three decades ago, the movement's job is to "organize discontent." And organize they have. They have welcomed it, they have flattered it, they have invited it in with millions of treason-screaming direct-mail letters, they have given it a nice warm home on angry radio shows situated up and down the AM dial. There is not only bitterness out there; there is a bitterness industry.

I'll say something here that I never thought I would ever say in my life: all props to the editors of the WSJ opinion page. They could have gone with any number of liberals who are much safer and more conventional, but they took a real risk here. They are sure to be deluged with angry phone calls and emails about this, now and in the future. So huzzah and kudos to them.

Comments

[Andy Vance]

I loves me some T. Frank. But I have to say no one has said it better yet than that knucklehead at TNR. "A junior faculty member extolling the dignity of Guatemalan peasant women," heh. http://tinyurl.com/4mf4jw

[Sir Charles]

Tom Frank is great -- I can't believe the WSJ will actually publish someone from the left who has balls. I know more people are familiar with What's the Matter with Kansas, but I highly recommend his earlier effort "One Market under God." A stunning disection of the madness of the market.

[Potato Head]

For years, WSJ used to include a weekly column by Alexander Cockburn (Eric Alterman's bete noir at The Nation). By that standard, Tom Frank is Frank Rich.

[Sir Charles]

P.H.

I should have said "left winger with balls and brains" -- Cockburn is so out there as one of the world's last unreconstructed Stalinists that giving him a column was the WSJ's clever way of hurting the left.

[MG]

I think you're celebrating a little early. When I was a kid the WSJ had Alexander Cockburn as an Op-ed columnist. Cockburn proceeded to do what he does oh-so-very well, and play a caricature of an extreme leftist, making him a straw man who not only fell over easily, but had the added benefit of repulsing any fair-minded people who actually read the opinion pages of the Journal. Frank would probably be harder to knock down (unless he discovered the price for falling over was right), but espousing economic populism to the kind of people who read the WSJ is inherently repulsive. They will look at Frank's stuff, and decide left wingers are all a bunch of protectionist, class warriors bent on bloated government and sticking it to the rich and corporations. One voice, even a strong one, isn't going to do a whole lot, and I doubt Rupert would let any more than one competent voice on the paper.

If Frank was publishing in places like the NYT, or Time, or Newsweek, it would mean a whole lot more, because there he'd have a chance to influence minds that are open to his ideas. Not so at the WSJ.

[Tom S]

Time for me to subscribe, at long last, to WSJ.

[TheOtherWA]

No wonder Novakula slammed Frank in his column yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042001754.html

He's jealous!

[Stav]

Tom, you shoulda subscribed long ago. The editorial and op-ed page are a laugh riot of stupidity and paranoia, but the news reporting and feature stories are better than any other paper in the country. Have not seen marked drop off in quality since Murdoch took over either. Oh be aware that all arts reviews are written through a conservative lens too.