Five Minutes With: Thomas Frank

Kansas, college, the culture war, punk rock and more.

An almost life-long Midwesterner, author Thomas Frank ended up on the best-seller list, much to his own surprise, with What’s the Matter with Kansas? Born in Kansas City, Frank, as he puts it “pulled himself up by his bootstraps, learned to read, write, and cipher.” As a writer, one reviewer described him as “the second coming of H.L. Mencken – but with better politics.” While still an undergraduate, he and a group of friends launched The Baffler, a trenchant and funny journal of cultural criticism based out of Chicago. In What’s the Matter with Kansas, Frank dug into the vexing problem of why working class Americans are voting against their own economic self-interest and embracing a conservative moral agenda that bears little fruit. What’s the Matter With Kansas is now on its way to becoming a feature film, due out in 2006.

CP: What projects are you up to now?

TM: I’m writing a new book, or I’m supposed to be. The idea of this one is to answer the questions everyone asks after they read What’s the Matter with Kansas? Which is what do you do about populist conservatives? Its about coming up with a strategy to beat them.

CP: Could you give us a hint of one of the strategies that you’re going to focus on?

TF: It’s not written yet! I will say that I do focus on creating a liberal economic message because that is something that pop conservatives have trouble talking about. Even thinking about. The more experience I have with these guys, the more I am convinced of this. They love to talk about culture war. Culture war is very exciting, it mobilizes millions of people. But when you start talking about things like social security privatization it immediately shuts them down because it doesn’t fit their populist versus elitist narrative. It’s just the opposite. It totally turns the tables on them. So you drive this home as much as you can. I’m trying to find ways to do that. This is something that totally problematizes their world.

CP: Conservatives have been using the culture war as sort of smokescreen for the main show – like the ongoing FOX obsession with Ward Churchill. What gives?

TF: Ultimately who cares? Why fight over that guy. I’ve read stuff he’s written it wasn’t impressive. I don’t care what he thinks. But the idea that liberals or democrats or democratic elected figures can somehow be held responsible for what this guy said is truly ridiculous.

CP: One thing you wrote about frequently is the way in which the conservative cultural agenda has largely gone unfulfilled while the conservative economic agenda has made great progress. With so many judicial appointments on the horizon in the next few years, do you still feel that way?

TF: Since 1968, when pop conservatism really started its path to power things have changed dramatically in the economic sphere. But culturally, they’re always on the defensive and their promise is we won’t let it go as far as the other team would. Their overall record on cultural issues is one of total failure. And the right deliberately chooses issues that get you very angry and present them in a blunt and unnuanced way. They do win some things here and there but their victories are very limited. Even with abortion, they’ve only been able to chip away around the edges. Pro-choice is still the dominant position in this country. If they were ever to win, they would themselves facing a massive backlash. The pro-choice people aren’t really mobilized anymore, they’re not motivated, they’re not in the streets. And conservatives want it that way. They want to keep it that way. That’s important. They have to walk a very fine line between victory and failure. Failure here is important for conservatives. There’s something very attractive about fighting the good impossible fight.

CP: Kansas had a big tradition of religious progressivism back in the day, how do you feel seeing Christianity so tied up in the conservative cultural agenda?

TF: When I was talking to audiences about What’s the Matter with Kansas I was just so surprised and astonished by how the right has managed to win over so many deep believing Christians to their cause. It is endlessly astonishing. For me, the message of the New Testament is so clearly about economic justice. I don’t know how you can get out of that. I don’t know how you can escape that side of it.

CP: Despite your Kansas background, I have still seen a few reviews that lashed out about you being an elitist.

TF: With every conservative review that was their argument. When I’m on their radio shows that’s their argument. I’ve learned a lot of interesting things about conservatism since the book came out. If you strip that argument away from them, they have nothing else. I am from Kansas, and I’m not a member of the elite. I did go to graduate school and that kind of thing. I’m not from a wealthy family, but nonetheless that’s what every conservative review tries to establish. But for these cultural conservatives, elitism is an attitude.

CP: Was college a transformative experience for you?

TF: Well, I came from a very conservative background and I was conservative when I was younger. I wound up going to the University of Virginia which is pretty conservative. And where I went to graduate school, at University of Chicago, can be even more conservative. Though it’s a very long story, my college years turned me into something of a liberal. My study of history in particular is what did it for me.

CP: Right now there is so much talk about how colleges are just these liberal bastions, does that jibe with your own experience?

TF: Have these critics visited the Economics department at University of Chicago? One of the amusing things about conservatives is that they always like to explain everything in terms of conspiracy or bias. This is a sort of willful act on behalf of the other team. But what about some of the deeper issues? Why are some industries more heavily dominated by liberals than others? The answer is not a simple, uncomplicated one. And a lot of it has to do with the marketplace for these industries – academia does not pay well and that probably doesn’t appeal to a lot of conservatives. It is always a more complicated story than the conservatives are willing to let on. They don’t like to talk about the free market in any way other than this pure reverence.

CP: What are the last five songs you’ve listened to on your iPod?

TF: I played a whole Duke Ellington Album from 1938. I played the whole damn thing; it’s incredibly long. Before that I played an album by [Montana-born, post-punk band] Silkworm. They are fantastic, one of my favorites. Before that, I listened to The Embarrassment. They’re a punk band from Wichita. Before that Galaxie 500. Before that, I listened to an album of show tunes from the 20s. I am trying to turn lots of my old, rare records into mp3s.

CP:I hear your daughter is a fan of punk rock music. True?

TF: Yup. She just turned four yesterday and she’s this huge fan of the Ramones, but she wouldn’t know that it is called punk rock or anything. But her thing now is Buddy Holly. She just loves Buddy Holly.