HomeTagged ‘Obama’
Brownback challenged from his Right
It looks like the latest challenge to the political right in Kansas is…the even further right?
Joan Heffington of Derby, KS recently announced her candidacy for governor of Kansas, pitting herself directly against the current GOP front-runner, Senator Sam Brownback. The Topeka Capitol-Journal reports:
Heffington, a Derby resident who has never held political office, said insight into [...]
Thomas Frank and David Frum agree: Tea Parties made for TV
Thomas Frank attended the Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, on the eve of the House vote to approve the health care bill. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum is calling the bill a Waterloo — for the Republicans.
Frum writes:
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans [...]
Win free tickets on our Facebook page
Starting today, we will be giving away pairs of free tickets to see “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” at the E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. Become a fan on Facebook, and you’ll get the contests in your news feed, and can also find them on our fan page.
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” will screen [...]
What’s the Matter with Democrats?
Thomas Frank has a notion of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party – why it repeatedly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory:
The answer to the riddle is as plain as the caviar on a lobbyist’s spoon. Democrats don’t speak to angry, working-class people because a lot of them can’t speak to angry, working-class people. [...]
From the mouths of Sarah Palin fans
Jezebel has posted a popular Youtube video of some interviews with fans lined up for a Sarah Palin book signing in Columbus, Ohio.
For the informed citizen, Palin’s fans are hard to listen to. Here’s a typical exchange:
FAN: (presumably in response to “what does Palin mean to you?”) Fairness, realness.
INTERVIEWER: Any policies, I guess, specifically, of [...]
The two Manhattans
George Haymont reviewed “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” back in October for his blog, My Cultural Landscape.
Writing about our movie alongside “New York, I Love You,” he couldn’t resist comparing Manhattan, New York to Manhattan, Kansas, beginning as follows:
While two new films focus on two very different areas of American life, they are tied together [...]
Thomas Frank: the backlash returns
Thomas Frank, who coined the term “the Great Backlash,” and made it famous in his book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” notes in his column in today’s Wall Street Journal that it didn’t take long for the Obama Honeymoon to end.
A scary new populism made the cover of Newsweek back in March.
But then we skipped [...]
Is Frank Rich right about the culture wars?
Frank Rich thinks the culture wars are dead, washed away by the economic meltdown and election of Obama. Future Majority and Daily Kos seems to largely agree. Fingerlakeswanderer begs to differ.
This is how we weighed in:
Having spent several years covering conservative evangelical Christians for our documentary film, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” I can testify [...]
Return of the conservative populists?
David Sirota, writing in Salon, muses that Republicans could revive their fortunes if they embrace populism, as Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul did during the primary campaign, calling Wall Street tycoons “criminals.”
Of course, at some point such rhetoric would need to be backed up by real policy proposals. And it’s safe to say that Republicans [...]
Who cares What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Obama’s President now, so who cares about the conservatives? Haven’t they now “lost” the heart of America? Shouldn’t we just move on?
Well, the election was not a landslide, nor did it redraw the electoral map. Plenty of working-class whites voted for McCain. And those pesky “wedge” issues are not going away. Mainly what happened was [...]
How much has changed with the election of Obama?
This is a bit off-topic for this blog but we couldn’t resist….
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” director Joe Winston grew up three blocks from the Obama’s house, and did a lot of filming in Hyde Park. Eighteen years ago, in the spring of 1990, he filmed a series of memorable interviews on black-white race relations [...]