Thomas Frank v. Sarah Palin

It doesn’t surprise me that historian/social critic Thomas Frank attacks Sarah Palin from his perch at the The Wall Street Journal. Palin deserves some criticism, of course, but I wish that Frank would not pile on in such a predictable fashion through such a thoroughly establishment outlet.

I have some respect for Tom Frank. I think he has good instincts and is well intentioned. His book The Conquest of Cool is well worth reading. It's reminiscent of the great Christopher Lasch. What’s the Matter with Kansas? is an important book. Despite its interesting stories and real insight, it does have one unfortunate flaw: it tends to blame the victim. Frank recognizes that the Republican Party exploits grassroots conservatives, but he does not assign blame equally. It is not just cynical GOP powermongers and gullible GOP populists who are responsible for the situation. The Democratic Party provides no credible alternative for citizens who care about democracy and freedom since it is elitist in every way (both politically-economically and socially-culturally). On one level, Frank, as a populist himself, knows this to be true, but he is a committed liberal Democrat who sees FDR as the acme of liberalism so he can go only so far in his criticism.

For a brief time in his youth, back in Kansas, Frank was a conservative Republican. While that experience allows him to sympathize with Heartland conservatives who are bamboozled by the Karl Roves and Rupert Murdochs of our world, it has not helped him to fully understand the situation. Instead, he praises the statist solutions of the Democrats. His early conservatism inoculated him against more nuanced and bona fide versions of conservatism later in life. That's regrettable.

With the publication of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a one-sided but insightful book, Tom Frank became nationally known and widely acclaimed. He achieved pundit status and deservedly so. But his association with The Wall Street Journal, a consistently plutocratic and neoconservative organ now owned by Murdoch, is interesting. Frank is left of center. The Journal would never allow Ralph Nader, Gore Vidal, or Seymour Hersh to be a weekly columnist. Any notable moralistic or libertarian conservative would be way beyond the pale. So why Tom Frank? Because he is safe. He is a domesticated liberal populist. Through a pithy aphorism and a mammoth novel, respectively, Lord Acton and J.R.R. Tolkien summed up the corrupting nature of power. Fame is a type of power. For an intellectual, it can bestow the power to influence others. Corruption almost invariably follows power, and this is true of fame.

This has always been the case. Jesus warned his disciples, “Beware when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). The context tells us that when He said “all men,” he meant respectable society – the rich and powerful. The statement comes right after the beatitudes, both positive and negative (Woe to the rich, woe to the full, woe to those who laugh now.). The world is not hospitable to the truth. As C.I. Scofield, a good unrespectable, low-church Protestant wrote a century ago, the New Testament concept of kosmos entails a deceptive world system organized on the basis of the "cosmic principles of force, greed, selfishness, ambition, and pleasure." That about sums up Washington, Hollywood, and Wall Street.

Hence, mainstream media and academia paid, and continue to pay, friendly attention to the respectable Woodrow Wilson but not to the more radical and authentic William Jennings Bryan. It is Theodore Roosevelt over Robert La Follette. The official environmentalist of the 1990s was Al Gore, not Jerry Brown or David Brower. Faux News boosts Rudy Giuliani, not Ron Paul. Elihu Root, Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize; Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Harold Hughes do not.

Marcus Borg writes about Christianity for the online Washington Post precisely because he is not a Christian (in any traditional sense of the word). Borg is part of an academic movement of affluent white men who issue manifestos on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Strangely enough, the poor and oppressed are not aware of the existence of modernists like Borg. If they were, they would likely view the apostate eggheads as deluded agents of the Devil! Like Thomas Frank, Marcus Borg has traveled far from his humble roots in North Dakota. Sadly, it has been in the wrong direction. Such men now have a place of privilege to spout their views, but instead of receiving genuine populism or spirituality from them, we receive a politically-correct, Power Elite–approved message.

We can still appreciate the true things that Tom Frank writes. They comprise a considerable amount. He's no Thomas Jefferson but at least he's not Thomas Friedman. It could be even worse: we could be reading an op-ed by Richard Cheney. Still, if we’re looking for wisdom from a contemporary Kansas populist, we’re better off reading Caleb Stegall than Thomas Frank.

Sarah Palin deserves some criticism and at least a little praise, but I don't think the house populist at The Wall Street Journal is the place to look for a perspective on Palin coming from a place of purity or consistency. I feel the same way about the Democratic Party's house evangelical, Jim Wallis, critiquing Pat Robertson. Ironically, the counterintuitive truth-telling that brings hinterland writers like Frank and Wallis to national attention eventually gives way to co-optation by elites far more interested in power and money than truth. So now the "prophet" is famous, but he is no longer prophetic.

Someone who claims to be a truth teller fearlessly evaluating the Kansans, Palins, and Robertsons should be able to do so without holding hands with phony politicians and greedy journalists. Also, it doesn't take much courage to pick on someone who's already down, already an object of widespread ridicule. Will Tom write an equally frank portrayal of Barack Obama's self-absorption, dishonesty, and inconsistencies? It seems unlikely, but we can hope.

I'm not that concerned about the alleged deficiencies of the Sunflower State. Who has Kansas bombed lately? Does Kansas trash our culture or rob us blind? I wonder, What's the Matter with Georgetown? With Beverly Hills? With Manhattan?

November 21, 2009