Thomas Frank, the What’s the Matter with Kansas? dude, will hit town a week from Friday to tell us habitués of the People’s Republic of Bloomington how we screwed up last fall’s election.
And — oh yeah — we screwed it up in about a dozen and a half ways. Well, we and some 65 million others. Then again, that’s how many of us voted against L’il Duce so mebbe we 65M aren’t really culpable. How about the 5 million or so folks who’d voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and then declined to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2016?
Aw, why don’t we just drop the whole blame game and get on with the 2018 mid-term elections? Here’s hoping Frank, a fairly perceptive observer of this holy land’s body politic, gives us some tips and hope for that excruciatingly crucial beauty contest.
Frank
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Frank‘s visit is being sponsored by Democracy for Monroe County, which itself writhed and pretzeled during last year’s internecine party snit-fest. Drop by the IU School of Educ. auditorium, 201 N. Rose Ave., 6:00pm, Friday, March 24th. (But get to bed early so’s you’ll be fresh for the next day’s Nancy Hiller appearance at the Book Corner.)
Frank’s 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew, astutely presages the “deconstruction” of the fed gov’t being implemented at the behest of demolition experts like Steve Bannon et al in the President Gag administration. He followed that up with Pity the Billionaire, yet another incisive peek into the bizarre minds of the new Right-ists. Then his Listen, Liberal, released last year, indicted…, well, us. That is, the Left, the Dems, the folks who could have saved the planet from the specter of, in the words of Charles Blow, “the vile, dishonest, incurious creature who got elected.”
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Extra Virgin Joe
I’ve got a couple of funtime scientists lined up for the next two Big Talks. Pending verifications — the two brainiacs have busy, ever-changing skeds — they’ll gab about:
- My second favorite drug, and
- Olive oil
Pour Away, Please
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Stayed tuned for more formal announcements. Big Talk is a regular Thursday feature of WFHB‘s Daily Local News. The DLN kicks off at 5:00pm and Big Talk usually comes on around 5:15. And, as a last resort, you can always go here to catch the latest chat-bash.
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Olive Oil: A Rough Business
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