Rhinocrisy

Apparently leftist pundit Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” and “One Market Under God”, is going to have a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal (read his debut here). I found this completely astonishing, but there is apparently astonishing precedent. A commenter on Ezra Klein’s blog informs us of a piece of ancient history: in the past the Journal featured Alexander Cockburn (of CounterPunch fame) as a regular columnist. Who knew?

Ezra takes the perspective that Frank’s presence will change nothing, since only a lefty economist would get through to Journal readers (whereas Frank is more of a sociologist). Maybe so; still, I find it surprisingly balanced for a Murdoch-owned publication.

Incidentally, I found this comment on the TNR blog thread about Frank intriguing:

Actually, having read the Frank piece, I find it suffers from the same tonedeafness people on the left generally show about “elitism.” Frank thinks “elite” means “rich”–which of course it does in part–and concludes from that that it’s ridiculous to call the relatively modestly endowed Obama an elite. But to ordinary working Americans “elite” also means “exemption from doing ‘real’ work.” In this regard they’re heirs to the Populists, whose basic distinction was not between rich and poor, but between “producers” and “nonproducing” parasites, who could be anyone from a hobo to J. P. Morgan–in the words of the Omaha Platform, a “tramp” or a “millionaire.” By this criterion, any member of the chattering classes–you guys, professors like myself–are part of the elite. Moreover, one doesn’t have to spend much time among one’s fellow elites to conclude that they’re also elitists–that they really do consider themselves superior to those who lack whatever gives them elite status: money if they’re rich, education if they’re chattering. TBS, the brouhaha over “Bittergate” was a case of right-wing pots calling the left-wing kettles black. But the fact remains that both the pots and the kettles are, in fact, black. All the self-righteous denials they can muster doesn’t change the fact that the left–and certainly Obama–has a problem with working-class white [and brown, BTW] America, and they need to do something about it.

This prompted me to consider the following notion: it would be fairly straightforward to find a handful of volunteers in America’s top ten liberal cities. These folks would each stake out a couple of Starbucks Coffee shops, and do a poll of their customers as they entered and exited the store. The questionnaire would (amongst other things) determine three important items:

• The customer’s political affiliation

• The customer’s educational attainment
• The customer’s favorite kind of coffee.

With this data, we might settle the debate about the latte-drinking liberal elite once and for all!