THOMAS FRANK: Pity the Billionaire: The Unlikely Resurgence of the American Right January 25, 2012

KPFA Radio 94.1FM presents

Hosted by Richard Wolinsky
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Berkeley Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA
$12 advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/216731 :: 800-838-3006
or: Pegasus Books (3 locations), Mrs. Dalloway’s, Moe’s Books, Walden Pond, DIESEL, A Bookstore, in SF - Modern Times Bookstore ($15 door)
Information: www.kpfa.org/events

From the bestselling author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? – a stunningly insightful and sardonic look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has incurred the inchoate wrath of tea party conservatism.

Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change, but when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession’s victims and that society’s traditional winners be given even grander shares. The American Right, apparently moribund after the election of 2008, was peculiarly reinvigorated by the arrival of serious hard times. The Tea Party movement demanded not that we question the failed system (as the Occupy Movement insisted) but that we reaffirm our commitment to its worst excesses. Republicans in Congress embarked on
a grim strategy of total opposition to the liberal state.

In Pity the Billionaire Thomas Frank, wily chronicler of American paradox, examines the bizarre mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American Right, and a wick sense of humor, he provides the first full diagnosis of our dangerous cultural malady.

“No one fools Thomas Frank, who is the sharpest, funniest, most intellectually voracious political commentator on the scene…he has written a brilliant expose of the most breathtaking ruse in American political history…”— Barbara Ehrenreich

“Pity the Billionaire? Hell. Pity us all.” — James K. Galbraith

Official Website: http://kpfa.org/events