Thomas Frank Talks With Truthout on How Wall Street Doubled Down on Trashing America's Economy

Friday 17 February 2012

by: Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview 

 

Mark Karlin: In "Pity the Billionaire," on page 71, you note that "market populism" shifted over the years from being "almost exclusively a faith of the wealthy" to being "the fighting faith of the millions." You definitely single out Glenn Beck as being a shill for this "faith" among the "disgruntled" masses. Was his role that important?

 

Thomas Frank: Glenn Beck had a huge role in the rise of the Tea Party and the broader shift of the nation to the right. Remember, during the period we're talking about, Beck was on the cover of Time as well as the New York Times Magazine; he was the subject of two separate biographies. Whether we like it or not, he was the face of that political moment, the voice that caught the public imagination. In fact, it is hard to make any sense at all of the Tea Party movement absent Glenn Beck's strange views of history and his dread of the Obama Administration. Go back and look at footage of Tea Party events or interviews with Tea Party participants, and you will find that they often echo, sometimes word for word, the idiosyncratic lessons taught by Professor Beck.