Kakutani is a pretty damn good N.Y.Times book reviewer, but she is in over her head this morning, in her review of the new Thomas Frank book, "The Wrecking Crew,How Conservatives Rule"
Frank's tome is a brilliant and timely analysis of Conservative deceit. Appearing on bookshelves alongside the latest swift boat "literature" it effectivly acts as an antidote to the venom spewing from the Corsi best seller and similar attack books.Kakutani doesn't see it that way.
Surprisingly she sees with unusual clarity that the left despises the "wickedness of conservative government in general" yet is so terribly befuddled that we let it bother us this much. In effect she says "it's ok for the left to point out how Conservatives are the "party of the rich," but we shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to combat what is a "fact of life" in a Capitalist society.
The crux of The Times reviewer's criticism of "The Wrecking Crew" is that Thomas Frank uses a
strident, impatient tone which undermines the possibility of a sober, nonpartisan discussion about matters like the Bush administration’s awarding of no-bid Iraq reconstruction contracts, its bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina, its politicization of the Justice Department and its adherence to tax cuts in wartime that have led to huge deficits.
Ms.Kakutani, are you aware that we Liberals and Progressives ,on a daily basis are scorched by the MSM and even by some of our own bloggers, as being too soft and too mushy? They imply we are afraid to be aggressive lest we be painted as extremists and unpatriotic.
Frank is excoriated in this supposedly objective review, for turning the Abramoff scandal into a "case study of the evils of free market principles."
Duh! What in the hell is it, if it isn't just that? This reviewer, who I now see I have over-respected,goes on (in a Rovian fashion I feel)to tie Iraq and Katrina to our over-generalizations about the creed our opponents on the right subscribe to. We are damned if we do and double damned if we don't.
More from the Times review:
As Mr. Frank sees it, incompetence and corruption are fuel for conservatism: that is, if public officials are inept or venal, people will get fed up with government and turn instead to private enterprise. Urging the reader to remember Watergate, he writes: "While the immediate consequences of Nixon’s outrageous behavior were jail sentences for several conservative Republicans and the election of a bumper crop of liberals to Congress in 1974, Watergate permanently poisoned public attitudes toward government and stirred up the wave that swept Ronald Reagan into office six years later — and made antigovernment cynicism the default American political sentiment."
I think this perception by the author is right on target, i.e. The winguts continuously and deliberately manuever us into submitting to their control by defunding us, slyly enticing us towards more deregulation and privatization. We lose faith in government ,just as they wanted us to do, and end up acting against our own best interests.
Kakutani,under the subterfuge of a review emphasizing with the left, like the master, Karl Rove, actually attempts to "blind us with science." as the song goes.
My final observation suggesting that Kakutani might be a wingnut in N.Y. Times clothing is when she offers as evidence Senator Obama's ability to amass $340 million in campaign contributions. Kakutani sees this, not as proof that big business cannot buy our candidate. Instead, she uses this to refute Thomas Frank's contentions that
"democracy cannot work when wealth is distributed as lopsidedly" as it is today, and that conservative Washington "has defunded the constituencies of the liberal state while constructing an imbalance that will tilt our politics rightward for years, a plutocracy that will stand regardless of who wins the next few elections."
Thank heaven,we have advocates like Frank to plead our cause. His book clarifies for me why financial inequality must ultimately lead to the political inequailties we have suffered,even during this cycle when all the cards seem to favor us. I suspected as much but he illustrates it more succinctly in spite of Kakutani's misleading,subjective review.
As Frank concludes "The rich vote at higher rates than others" I guess Rove would call that "protecting my base"