Hephalumps and Woozels:A Review of Joshua Frank's Left Out
by Adam Engel
First the good news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist who's written a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what the Democrats really are. Now the bad news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist who's written a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what the Democrats really are.
Depending upon your outlook, you may not care that there are still real journalists out there, like Frank, who are willing to search for and describe the truth. You may be one of those "fundamentalist" types who still believe what Mommy and Daddy and whatever relevant Authorities told you when you were one to ten years old – the years of impression, the mind-minting years, the years of language-acquisition and consequently, myth acquisition: that the Democrats are the "party of opposition," the defenders of "the little guy" and all that's worth fighting for. Mr. Smith goes to Washington, etc.
It's been five years since the appearance of Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's The Al Gore User's Manual, which gave us a detailed account of the real Al Gore, who was no more an "environmentalist" than Lee Iaccoca, no more a "typical American" than his rival, George W. Bush. One wonders whether, if more people had known the truth about what the Democratic party was and is, Ralph Nader would have received more votes than "Bronx Cheers," or if people would still have blamed the man whose life was spent working for the public good for lost votes for/against two men whose lives had hitherto been spent living off the fruits of public misery. Perhaps the User's Manual came out too soon; people were still high on the deeply inhaled myth of Clintonian prosperity, though by the 2000 election the bubble had burst; lives and markets had begun to crash.
Joshua Frank's Left Out deals with the myth that "America would be 'A.O.K' again under a Democratic president." Just as it had allegedly been flying high with Clinton and his co-pilot (Hillary? Gore? Blair?).
The first part of the book, filling half of its densely sourced and researched, yet blazingly readable 211 pages, deals with the phenomenon of the alleged "progressive outsider" Howard Dean, Vermont Governor, M.D.,%2
First the good news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist who's written a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what the Democrats really are. Now the bad news: Joshua Frank is a first-rate journalist who's written a superbly researched, incisive book about who and what the Democrats really are.
Depending upon your outlook, you may not care that there are still real journalists out there, like Frank, who are willing to search for and describe the truth. You may be one of those "fundamentalist" types who still believe what Mommy and Daddy and whatever relevant Authorities told you when you were one to ten years old – the years of impression, the mind-minting years, the years of language-acquisition and consequently, myth acquisition: that the Democrats are the "party of opposition," the defenders of "the little guy" and all that's worth fighting for. Mr. Smith goes to Washington, etc.
It's been five years since the appearance of Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's The Al Gore User's Manual, which gave us a detailed account of the real Al Gore, who was no more an "environmentalist" than Lee Iaccoca, no more a "typical American" than his rival, George W. Bush. One wonders whether, if more people had known the truth about what the Democratic party was and is, Ralph Nader would have received more votes than "Bronx Cheers," or if people would still have blamed the man whose life was spent working for the public good for lost votes for/against two men whose lives had hitherto been spent living off the fruits of public misery. Perhaps the User's Manual came out too soon; people were still high on the deeply inhaled myth of Clintonian prosperity, though by the 2000 election the bubble had burst; lives and markets had begun to crash.
Joshua Frank's Left Out deals with the myth that "America would be 'A.O.K' again under a Democratic president." Just as it had allegedly been flying high with Clinton and his co-pilot (Hillary? Gore? Blair?).
The first part of the book, filling half of its densely sourced and researched, yet blazingly readable 211 pages, deals with the phenomenon of the alleged "progressive outsider" Howard Dean, Vermont Governor, M.D.,%2
posted by ডঃ নুরুল ইসলাম মনজুর | 12:08 AM
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