I've got a doubter down in the comments below. So let's see how often Obama has been linked to Tom Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?, shall we?
There's Marc Ambinder, Protein Wisdom, The American Prospect, and that's definitely Dan Schnur making a clucking sound over at the New York Times. Oh, and Slate in a column literally called Chatterbox (which sounds a lot like a place where clucking happens) has the headline Thomas Frank Speaks. Which is a little over-the-top for a title, and admittedly after the fact of Tom's own WSJ column. But it certainly suggests that Slate's been waiting for Tom to weigh in on the matter over which so much pundit sweat has been shed. (As an aside, does Tom distill the sweat of these pundits for his own men's fragrance line?)
Anyway, it only does take a Google search, Western Swing, to determine that the chattering classes have been linking Obama's remarks to Frank's book.
5 comments:
First, I will grant you the supposition that Ambindeer, Klein or Goldtsein qualify as pundits despite their main outlets of communication marginally qualifying as mass media. I think this claim is specious but its not germaine to the argument at hand whether Frank actually meant pundits proper (like Bill Kristol, George Will, Frank Rich etc) or writers for publication like the Atlantic and a handful of bloggers.
Now to your defense of Frank's assertion of widespread media clucking. Here is his statement:
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."
Emphasis clearly mine. We both did the same google search and there was precisely one "pundit", the consistently misguided Marc Ambindeer who suggested that there was a persuasive relationship between Tom's writings and Barack's statements. Presumably you found the other links but didn't read their content - neither Klein or Goldstein suggested any such relationship. They linked Ambindeer's post to begin their own discussion of the matter while not making the same connection. They clearly realized that there was little new or original about the thesis for "What's the matter with Kansas?" and many thinking progressives like Obama had already reached the same conclusions long before its publication.
So, basically, a lone consistently misguided "pundit" wrote for the Atlantic and asserted that Obama was 'persuaded by' "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and Tom Frank concludes its the "general clucking of the national punditry". For lack of a better phrasing, given the evidence you have provided in defense of Frank's claim, the claim is laughably untrue. One person of any renown, debatably a pundit, made the connection, not the punditry as a group, even if that group is defined as merely more than one person. Certainly no consensus or large percentage as "general clucking" indicates.
So, one pundit had made the link. That is, one pundit did so until Tom Frank in his new role as liberal token for Murdoch's WSJ editorial page made the argument thereby inserting himself in the pointless conversation (betcha that will help him sell more books) and opening yet another avenue into the conservative talking point that Obama has dangerous ties to far-left Hyde Park/University of Chicago intellectuals.
Ben Smith made the comparison too (Obama making a Tom Frank-esque argument), but I can't find it now. Carry on.
The title of Novak's column on the subject -- "What's the Matter with Obama" clearly made it seem like Obama was tking his argument from Tom's book. The actual body of the column is less clear and leave open the idea that Obama and TF came to similar conclusions independently.
Lorin,
Novak's column appeared after Tom's piece where he asserted that there was a "general clucking" regarding WTMWK's persuasive influence on Obama's comments. Indeed given the way the Right Wing Noise Machine works I wouldn't be surprised if his editor at Creator's Syndicate (I have no idea who distributes Novak) tasked him with writing a follow-up piece after (or even before) Tom's piece appeared in the WSJ.
Now, after Tom wrote this piece, there will be a larger discussion of Obama's links to "radical Hyde Park intellectuals" (I really hope Obama was never photographed with Rashid Khalidi or even John Mearsheimer) but his assertion that there was any such "general" discussion before he wrote his piece is simply untrue. In an exceptionally self-serving way Tom has interjected himself into a discussion, a rather pointless discussion at that. Its now fresh news for the talking heads across the networks and newspapers.
Given who is signing his paychecks these days and the general pointlessness of his op-ed it certainly looks like Tom is doing the Right's bidding. While its certainly possible that his own arrogance is blinding him - I think its fully within the realm of possibility that Tom believes that nobody could have ever independently come up with the thesis of WTMWK previously or independently - I personally think Tom's far too clever to not have realized what he was doing.
FWIW, if during or after this election cycle Tom becomes a full-time WSJ columnist I suspect we will see more of the same and people like Bob Somersby are going to have a field day with him.
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