Lewis Lapham and Thomas Frank Forecast the Next American Revolution

BLANK May 5, 2014 The Harper's Magazine associates have had their eyes on America and its moneyed rulers for a combined nine decades. In a bookstore conversation about the latest issue of Lapham's Quarterly, they name the forces conspiring to drive the nation into another age of upheaval. Dig deeper ( 5 Min. Read )

Pascal’s Wager for the Age of Citizens United

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Apr 22, 2014 Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg told The New York Times he was confident he would walk "straight in" to heaven "without stopping to be interviewed," because, as Salon's Tom Frank puts it, "he has put his money on the most glaringly virtuous politics available." Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

‘The Dick Joke Is Not Always Your Friend’

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Mar 6, 2014 The recently deceased Harold Ramis' beloved anti-authoritarian comedies of the late ’70s and the ’80s (including "Animal House" starring John Belushi, pictured) were pop trojan horses of then-emerging right-wing cultural values, former Harper's Magazine columnist Thomas Frank writes at Salon. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

The Liberal Love of ‘Inequality’

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Feb 27, 2014 Like "neoliberalism," former Harper's Magazine columnist Thomas Frank writes at Salon, the tone of the term "inequality" is "needlessly clinical, giving the whole debate a technical and bloodless air." Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Back to Blunt the Cutting Edge

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Jul 19, 2013 John Summers, editor-in-chief of the critical, satirical magazine The Baffler, appeared on Boston's WGBH News to introduce his journal to television audiences, saying that when people ask what the publication is about, he "remind[s] them that this sort of thing existed for a long time in the American cultural scene." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Our God of Imagination

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig May 22, 2013 In his latest "Easy Chair" column, Harper's Magazine contributor Thomas Frank sarcastically eviscerates the business class' most prized literary genre: creativity. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )

How the Media’s Experts Became Better Than You

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Mar 23, 2013 The job of corporate news pundits is to appear to say true and important things without attaching those views to themselves or their employers, writes Thomas Frank in the April issue of Harper's Magazine. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Pity the Bamboozled and Confused

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Jan 8, 2013 “Every problem that the editorialists fret about today will get worse,” Harper’s Magazine columnist and author Thomas Frank told an audience in November. “Inequality, global warming, financial bubbles, one after another. But it won’t matter. On America will go, chasing the only ideology that our country has left, down into the seething Arcadia of all against all.” Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Bestiary: The American Infidel

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Jan 3, 2013 Born of the last decade of aggression against theocratic regimes many thousands of miles away, the American infidel “is a rebel for laissez-faire capitalism, an anarchist for the law, an enforcer of the established order,” writes Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Frank. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Modify Your Criticism, Please

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Dec 28, 2012 Left-wing generationalism is on display on the pages of this month’s Jacobin as editor Peter Frase responds to Baffler contributor Thomas Frank’s criticism of the ethos of the Occupy movement. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

How OWS Toppled Itself

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Dec 14, 2012 Postmodern confusion about how populist movements take hold and flourish caused Occupy Wall Street to “deconstruct” itself in a frenzied obsession with nonhierarchical structures, a disdain for demands, and other trappings of “lazy, reflexive libertarianism,” author and columnist Thomas Frank writes in The Baffler. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

The Working Life of a Professional Cynic

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Nov 1, 2012 Thomas Frank, master of sarcasm and chief polemicist for Harper’s Magazine, is a treasure of the anxious, aggravated left. He recently made a demonstration of happy defiance in the face of accelerating social disaster in an interview with The Financial Times. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )