Thomas Frank Takes Spot At WSJ; Frost Reported in Hell

Posted by Kathy G, The G-Spot at 3:26 PM on April 23, 2008.

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 ellows 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.

Tagged as: wall street journal, thomas frank

Kathy G Runs The G-Spot blog.