Alexandra Gutierrez explains how a new documentary revisits Thomas Frank's Kansas but forgets about what's the matter with it. Midway through George W. Bush's tenure, Thomas Frank diagnosed the cause of low-income voters' self-defeating conservatism with his much toasted book, What's the Matter with Kansas?. The invective dropped in the heat of the 2004 election season, just as John Kerry -- veteran, statesman, and the Democratic Party's safest bet -- was being cast as a windsurfing snob. The counterattacks that Bush, too, was a dynastic son of privilege just didn't stick. After all, Bush understood "Real America." It was maddening and, to many, inexplicable. With Kansas, Frank used his home state to argue that class animus mixed with inflammatory politics turned the white, rural working class into a rapturous GOP bloc. This, as he put it, inspired the "Great Backlash." His Kansans weren't self-interested voters. Instead, they fought against the wanton slaughter of unborn babies, the dark sins of Sodom, and the fiendish liberal agenda. Frank's book confirmed the sneaking suspicions of many liberals at campaign rallies and on op-ed pages: The working class was being played by the Republican Party. New York Times columnists Nicholas Kristof and Frank Rich breathlessly called it the year's best political book. Marc Cooper at The Atlantic praised Frank for "skillfully deconstruct[ing] what might be dubbed the Great Con Job: the conservative canard that somehow Democrats have cornered the market on elitism, while the GOP's bleeding heart is more with the little guy than with Enron's Kenneth Lay." In an effusive review for The Nation, George Scialabba complained of the "apparent blindness of the backlashers to their self-victimization has long made many of us crazy." KEEP READING. . .
