thomas frank

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WICKED SMART?

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YT 10 26 MOLLY J FAST

INNOVATION CREATIVITY RHET GOD TERM

Oct 19, 2026 Fast Politics w/ Molly Jong-Fast on YouTube

Thomas Frank (the author of books like What the Matter With Kansas and his latest The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket) explains that his new book traces how “creativity” and “innovation” became powerful buzzwords used to justify class hierarchy, elite power, and the Democratic Party’s shift away from working-class politics. He argues that Barack Obama embodied this ideology by celebrating innovation, Google, and STEM education in a way that sounded progressive while also aligning with corporate and Silicon Valley interests and making politicians seem powerless.

Frank connects this to the broader decline of the middle class, the rise of a “creative class” narrative that privileges white-collar work over blue-collar labor, and the long political realignment in places like Kansas, where suburban voters have drifted toward Democrats even as many Republicans have remained dominant elsewhere. Subscribe to Fast Politics and listen 4x a week for interviews just like this on your favorite podcast app: https://episodes.fm/1645614328

How Silicon Valley Hijacked Politics w/ Thomas Frank

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https://kpfa.org/area941/program/letters-politics-history-collection/page/8/

A History of Populism

03.06.21 Guest: Thomas Frank, historian, writer and journalist. Author of many books including What’s the Matter with Kansas and his latest The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?447453-2/rendezvous-oblivion

Rendezvous with Oblivion

Thomas Frank examined economic inequalities in cities across the country.

wrecking crew

https://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/the-wrecking-crew/

http://www.c-span.org/video/?406308-1/book-discussion-listen-liberal

dems abandon unions for suburb wht ppl? wall st

rendez w/ oblivion: kansas --> US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Frank

Thomas Carr Frank (born March 21, 1965) is an American political analyst, historian, journalist and columnist for Harper's Magazine. He wrote "The Tilting Yard" column in the Wall Street Journal from 2008 to 2010, and he co-founded and edited The Baffler. He has written several books, most notably What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004).

Frank is a historian of culture and ideas and analyzes trends in American electoral politics and propaganda, advertising, popular culture, mainstream journalism and economics. His writing topics include the rhetoric and impact of the culture wars in American political life and the relationship between politics and culture in the United States.

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Politics

Frank started his political journey as a College Republican,[1] but has come to be highly critical of conservatism, especially the presidency of George W. Bush. Frank summarized the thesis of his book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule as "Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." [2]

Frank is the founder and editor of The Baffler and the author of several books. Other writings include essays for Harper's Magazine, Le Monde diplomatique,Bookforum, and the Financial Times. His book What's the Matter with Kansas?, published in 2004, earned him nationwide and international recognition.

“The backlash…is a crusade in which one’s material interests are suspended in favor of vague cultural grievances that are all-important and yet incapable of ever being assuaged.” [3]

“While earlier forms of conservatism emphasized fiscal sobriety, the backlash mobilizes voters withexplosive social issues…which is then married to pro-business economics.”[4]

“To [conservative] backlash writers, the operations of business are simply not a legitimate subject of social criticism. In the backlash mind, business is natural; it is normal; it is beyond politics.” [5]

“Backlash culture abounds with tall tales of liberals out of control, with hippies spitting on [Vietnam War] veterans, with Jane Fonda narking on POWs to their Vietnamese captors…”[6]

“Whereas liberals are thought to erupt self-righteously whenever they feel like it, conservatives believe that they themselves are never permitted to say what they really think.”[7]

“Thebacklash is a theory of how the political world works, but it also provides a ready-made identity in which the glamour of authenticity, combined with the narcissism of victimhood is available to almost anyone.”[8]

“To be a populist conservative is to be a fatalist…where the liberal stranglehold on life can never be broken. This is a curious set of beliefs for a coalition that quite literally rules American politics.” [9]

“Ignoring one’s economic self-interest may seem a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is an act of noble self-denial, a sacrifice to a holier cause.”[10]

“…the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war.” [11]

— Thomas Frank fromWhat’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004)

“The big government that [conservatives] rail against is, by and large, their government. For a political faction to represent itself as a rebellion against a government for which it is itself responsible for may strike you as a supremely cynical maneuver.” [12]

— Thomas Frank from The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. (2008)

Since December 2010, Frank has written the monthly "Easy Chair" column for Harper's Magazine.[13]

Personal life

Frank was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1965. He grew up in a local suburb, Mission Hills, Kansas. Frank graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School. He later attended the University of Kansas. He also attended the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1994. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and children.

Bibliography

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Books

Frank, Thomas (1997). The conquest of cool : business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. University of Chicago Press.
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (2000) ISBN 0-385-49503-X
New Consensus for Old: Cultural Studies from Left to Right (2002) ISBN 0-9717575-4-2
Boob Jubilee: The Mad Cultural Politics of the New Economy: Salvos from the Baffler (2003) ISBN 0-393-32430-3
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004). Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978-1-4299-0032-4
What's the Matter with America? The Resistible Rise of the American Right (2006) ISBN 0-09-949293-8
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (2008), Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0-8050-7988-2
Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right (2011) ISBN 978-0-8050-9369-8
Listen, Liberal: How the Party of the People Learned to Love Inequality (2016) ISBN 978-1-6277-9539-5