WFHB

Historian and bestselling author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank, came to Bloomington on March 24th promoting his latest attempt at diagnosing our decades-long liberal malaise and ineptitude in the Democratic Party.

While he was here he stopped in to chat with Interchange Assistant Producer Rob Schoon about his new book: Listen, Liberal — which asks the question, “Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?”

With a focus on the metamorphosis of the Democratic Party from New Deal to New Democrats, Frank makes plain what once was a party dedicated to the working class and the commonwealth, is now a political operation dedicated to professional class interests and obsessed with Ivy League expertise.

We begin with the still-astonishing fact of who won the presidency last November. And in turn, who lost. And how ‘the party of the people’ found themselves outflanked by right-wing populist rhetoric on issues that the democratic leadership had quietly abandoned for decades.

Frank outlines the democratic party’s shift — starting in 1968 — away from labor and towards the interests of one predominant group: the emerging professional class of the college-educated expert.

And how that decades-long shift in the left — the product of "reforms" and movements under various names like neoliberalism, the new democrats, and Atari liberals — contributed to the historic levels of inequality we see today.

GUEST

Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What’s the Matter with Kansas? Thomas is also a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, the founding editor for The Baffler, and 2005 winner of the Eugene V. Debs award.

RELATED

Nor a Lender Be: Hillary Clinton, liberal virtue, and the cult of the microloan by Thomas Frank

What's the Matter with Liberals by Thomas Frank (2005)

The cult of the expert – and how it collapsed by Sebastian Mallaby

Pistols for Two: Jay Rosen vs Thomas Frank (The Baffler, 1999)

MUSIC

"Endless Sea" Iggy Pop

"Working Class Hero" John Lennon

"Aquarius" The Fifth Dimension

"You Think You're So Smart" Aaron Neville

"Eminence Front" The Who

NEXT UP: Reinventing Radicalism

What happened to the American left after the Sixties? This the question LA Kauffman seeks to answer in her book, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. The book examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have used disruptive tactics to catalyze change against long odds, creating a new kind of decentralized and multi-vocal radical politics in the process. But to what effect? When has direct action made an enormous, undeniable difference? And what subtle, but positive changes have been brought about, at least in part, by non-violent direct action?

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Assistant Producer and Episode Host: Rob Schoon

Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks

Executive Producer: Joe Crawford

Next time on Interchange, "It Takes a Democrat: Selling Out Solidarity."

We’re joined by Thomas Frank, bestselling author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, whose latest book Listen, Liberal asks the question, “Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?” With a focus on the metamorphosis of the Democratic Party from New Deal to New Democrats, centered in the presidency of Bill Clinton, Frank makes plain where once there was a party dedicated to the the working class and the commonwealth, there is now a political operation dedicated to professional class interests and obsessed with Ivy League expertise. With the myth of meritocracy at hand to justify billion-dollar bonuses and get-out-of-jail-free cards, the Party of Experts explains away inequality as simply the failure of some to adapt to the “new economy” — all while it turns away from the average working people who used to constitute its base.

Selling Out Solidarity, next time on Interchange, Tuesdays at 5:30 pm on WFHB.

Our show today, "Entertainment Inaction," is in two parts and is a special for our Spring Fund Drive. Cast a glance up and to the right of the page (right next to Phil's head)...see that big red "Donate" button? You know what to to.

PART ONE: Listen, Liberal

Assistant Producer Rob Schoon sat down in the WFHB studio with bestselling author Thomas Frank to discuss his latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Our focus for this segment is on the professional liberal political class and its failure in the 2016 election: One of the "most-qualified" presidential candidates in history lost to one of "least-qualified" presidential candidates in history. How did that happen?

PART TWO: Sounds of (In)Action

Rasul Mowatt returns for a second episode in our "Sounds of Resistance" series. This time on songs that are a part of entertainment activism--often promoting a status quo inaction against the song's and the artist's purported intentions.

GUESTS

Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What’s the Matter with Kansas? He is also a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, the founding editor for The Baffler, and 2005 winner of the Eugene V. Debs award.

Rasul Mowatt is Associate Professor of American Studies and Associate Chair and Associate Professor in Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies with the School of Public Health at Indiana University.

RELATED

Withering on the Vine by Thomas Frank

Protesting at Lunchtime: Defying Trump Becomes a Washington Lifestyle

Protesters, You Better Dress for Success

Ani DiFranco’s faux-pology: White privilege and the year in race

Righteous Retreat Cancelled (DiFranco's website)

Not Talkin' Bout a Revolution

MUSIC

"Alfie's Theme" Sonny Rollins

"That's Just the Way It Is" Bruce Hornsby

"Changes" Tupac Shakur

"Pride (In the Name of Love)" U2

"Love Me, I'm a Liberal" Phil Ochs

"Self-Evident" Ani DiFranco

"By the Time I Get to Arizona" Public Enemy

"Chicago" Graham Nash

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" Gil Scott Heron

"Mississippi Goddam" Nina Simone

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon

Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks

Executive Producer: Joe Crawford

Next time on Interchange, a special show and a unique opportunity for our local listeners. This will be a 90-minute program featuring an interview with Thomas Frank, author of the bestselling What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and most recently, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?; and a second installment of our series with Rasul Mowatt on "The Sounds of Resistance"--this time on songs that are a part of and critique entertainment activism--often promoting a status quo inaction.

And it’s our Spring Fund Drive. We’re inviting you to Come STAND with WFHB and Interchange April 4th at FARMbloomington from 5 to 8 p.m. for a an Eat & Give listening party. It’s $20 a plate, $10 of which goes to support WFHB and Interchange. RSVP by 9 a.m. on Tuesday, 4/4.

Details are available at at the WFHB events page on Facebook.

GUESTS

Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What’s the Matter with Kansas? He is also a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, the founding editor for The Baffler, and 2005 winner of the Eugene V. Debs award.

Rasul Mowatt is Associate Professor of American Studies and Associate Chair and Associate Professor in Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies with the School of Public Health at Indiana University.

Our show is Cuba in Africa, or what my guest today has called “Castro’s Worldview: Foreign Policy in a Hostile World.”

Our music throughout also reflects the influence of Cuba in Africa and the struggle for independence by African nations. Our opening song, “Valodia” by Santocas, released shortly after Angolan independence is in praise of a guerilla fighter. Some of the lyrics in tranlated paraphrase:

Far away I heard that name

Unforgettable Angolan children ...

Volódia, in defense of the Angolan people!

Angolan people be vigilant

That in neo-colonialism the repression is worse!

Misery is a martyrdom,

Poverty also

And neo-colonialism has no color.

Down Capitalism!

Down with imperialism!

Down neocolonialism!

Advance socialism!

In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cuban victory in Angola “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa ... Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent—and of my people—from the scourge of apartheid.”

Or in the words of Paulo Flores in his song “Semba pra Luanda”:

"It was in the Cuando Cubango, Cuito Cuanavale, that we wrote the history of the world, after all."

Our guest, Piero Gleijeses first traveled to Cuba in 1980 as part of an academic exchange between SAIS [the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University] and the University of Havana. In 1994, he began conducting research in the closed Cuban archives—the only foreigner who has been allowed to do so in the past 55 years—and over the next two decades visited Cuba about three times a year, on average, with each visit lasting three to five weeks.*

GUEST

Piero Gleijeses is professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991, both from UNC Press, and The Cuban Drumbeat from Seagull Books, among other books.

RELATED

*SAIS scholar of Cuban foreign policy offers perspective on historic shift in U.S.-Cuba relations (12/14)

Hip Deep Angola 4: The Cuban Intervention in Angola

Funk Before War In Angola

The Consecration of Bishop Caetano in the Journal of Angola

MUSIC

"Valodia" by Santocas

“Rumba Zatukine” by David Zé

“Volta Camarada” by Matadidi

“Sou Angolano” by Dom Caetano

NEXT UP

A special 90-minute program in two parts. Part One features an interview with Thomas Frank, author of the bestselling What’s the Matter with Kansas, and most recently, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?; and Part Two is a second installment of our series with Rasul Mowatt on The Sounds of Resistance--this time on songs that critique the action of politics as often promoting a status quo inaction.

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon

Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks

Executive Producer: Joe Crawford

Cuba in Africa

We're joined by Piero Gleijeses whose book, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, “bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger.” The work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations and revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War.

Cuba in Africa, on the next Interchange, Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. on WFHB.

Today, politicians and intellectuals warn that we face a crisis of civility and a veritable war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating diversity as well as active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this conversational virtue appears critical. But is civility really a virtue? Or is it, as critics claim, a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent?

For this program we'll highlight the life and example of 17th century Puritan Roger Williams. His "mere civility" was a radical notion: if you expect to be able to evangelize (and this was his primary concern) the you must allow others the same opportunity, no matter how much you disagree with them, even if you abhor their ways and believe they will surely spend eternity in hellfire.

Williams was expelled by the leaders from the colony of Massachusetts because local officials thought that he was spreading "new and dangerous ideas" to his congregants (time and again, and after promising always to desist), and he fled the Massachusetts colony under the threat of impending arrest and shipment to an English prison. He began the settlement of Providence Plantation in 1636 as a refuge offering freedom of conscience and is known as the founder of Rhode Island. He is perhaps best remembered as the originator of the principle of separation of church and state (found in his 1644 book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience), but might deserve as much attention for his 1643 work A Key into the Language of America, describing the American Indian languages in New England in the 17th century, largely Narragansett, an Algonquian language.

GUEST

Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. Her new book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, sheds light on our predicament and the impasse between “civilitarians” and their opponents by examining early modern debates about religious toleration. As concerns about uncivil disagreement achieved new prominence after the Reformation, seventeenth-century figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the war of words would be necessary. But they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.

RELATED

"You don’t have to be nice to political opponents. But you do have to talk to them" by Teresa Bejan

"Acknowledging Equality," the seventh Balzan-Skinner lecture and symposium with Balzan-Skinner Fellow Dr. Teresa Bejan (video)

‘Bell Curve’ author attacked by protesters at Middlebury College

MUSIC

"Don't Let's Be Mean to the Germans" by Noël Coward

"Like a Song" by U2

"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding" by Elvis Costello

NEXT UP

Cuba in Africa

We're joined by Piero Gleijeses whose book, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, “bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger.” The work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations and revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Unio...

Next time on Interchange: "Do you bite your thumb at us, Sir?"

What is Civil Discourse and why do politicians and pundits seem to resort to admonishment when discourse gets messy and less than civil. Also, what is civility in the first place and who gets to define it? I’ll talk with author Teresa Bejan about her book Mere Civility, who’s hero espouses radical Tolerance. But doesn’t tolerance imply a kind of superiority and condescension for the tolerated? As Thomas Watson, an English, Nonconformist, Puritan, in the mid-1600s said, Civility is but strewing flowers on a dead corpse."Civility is but strewing flowers on a dead corpse."

GUEST

Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. Her new book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, sheds light on our predicament and the impasse between “civilitarians” and their opponents by examining early modern debates about religious toleration. As concerns about uncivil disagreement achieved new prominence after the Reformation, seventeenth-century figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the war of words would be necessary. But they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

"Do you bite your thumb at us, Sir?" next time on Interchange, Tuesdays at 5:30 on WFHB.

Our opening song is "Sophisticated Lady," the Duke Ellington jazz standard, performed by Ella Fitzgerald, speaking of disillusionment and loss. There's plenty of that to around in the life of Eleanor Roosevelt and her circle of family and friends.

Our show today is "Eleanor in Love and Politics."

In the first part of the show we’ll be joined by Susan Quinn. We’ll discuss her biography of love and friendship, Eleanor & Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. That first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, once called "First Lady of the World," has also been christened the “First Lady of Gay Rights” and in Quinn’s new book we’re introduced to the woman who was likely Roosevelt’s first, and deepest, love, the journalist and writer Lorena Hickok. But, we’ll also hear about her love for Joe Lash and David Gurewitsch, the latter of whom Eleanor Roosevelt wrote or telephoned everyday for the last ten years of her life.

For part two of the show we’ll turn to historian Jane Marcellus to ask about Eleanor Roosevelt’s first book, the 1933 It’s Up to the Women, a work that Marcellus claims is a counter-statement to the propaganda project instigated by Edward Bernays for the presidential campaign of Franklin Roosevelt rolled out in the February 1932 Ladies’ Home Journal. What was “up to the women” according the father of propaganda and public relations? To save Democracy via Patriotic shopping, of course!

GUESTS

Susan Quinn has written for The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, and the Boston Globe Magazine, among others. Her biography of Karen Horney was awarded the Boston Globe’s Lawrence Winship award, and she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller residency at Bellagio in Italy for work on the life of Marie Curie.

Jane Marcellus is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Her scholarly work examines media representation of employed women in the early and mid-20th century. She is the author of Business Girls and Two-Job Wives: Emerging Media Stereotypes of Employed Women (Hampton Press, 2011) and co-author of Mad Men and Working Women: Feminist Perspectives on Historical Power, Resistance, and Otherness (Peter Lang, 2014), which was named to Teen Vogue magazine’s “most epic feminist reading list ever” in 2015.

RELATED

"Eleanor Roosevelt’s Close Relationship With the Journalist Lorena Hickok"

"The Charms of Eleanor" by Russell Baker

"Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of Gay Rights"

The Museum of Public Relations - Edward Bernays

Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War II

MUSIC

"Sophisticated Lady" performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington

"Autumn in New York" performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

"Rosie the Riveter" performed by the Kay Kyser Band

"Hooray for Love" performed by Ella Fitzgerald

Romeo & Juliet (1968 film), I.i

UP NEXT

Do You Bite Your Thumb At Us, Sir?

What is Civil Discourse and why do politicians and pundits seem to resort to admonishment when discourse gets messy and less than civil. Also, what is civility in the first place and who gets to define it? We’ll talk to two scholars, Aurelian Craiutu and Teresa Bejan, both with new books that seek to center the meaning of civility in politics and religious discourse...

Susan Quinn joins us to discuss her “biography of love," Eleanor & Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. Eleanor Roosevelt has recently been christened the “First Lady of Gay” and in Quinn’s new book we’re introduced to the woman who was likely Roosevelt’s first, and deepest, love, the journalist and writer Lorena Hickok. But, we’ll also hear about her love for Joe Lash and David Gurewitsch, the latter of whom Roosevelt wrote or telephoned everyday for the last ten years of her life. We’ll also talk to historian Jane Marcellus about Eleanor Roosevelt’s first book, the 1933 It’s Up to the Women; a work that Marcellus claims is a counter-statement to the propaganda project instigated by Edward Bernays for the presidential campaign of Franklin Roosevelt rolled out in the February 1932 Ladies’ Home Journal. What was “up to the women” according to the father of propaganda and public relations? Saving Democracy via Patriotic shopping, of course.

Eleanor in Love and Politics, on the next Interchange, Tuesdays at 5:30 pm on WFHB.

GUESTS

Susan Quinn has written for The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, and the Boston Globe Magazine, among others. Her biography of Karen Horney was awarded the Boston Globe’s Lawrence Winship award, and she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller residency at Bellagio in Italy for work on the life of Marie Curie.

Jane Marcellus is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Her scholarly work examines media representation of employed women in the early and mid-20th century. She is the author of Business Girls and Two-Job Wives: Emerging Media Stereotypes of Employed Women (Hampton Press, 2011) and co-author of Mad Men and Working Women: Feminist Perspectives on Historical Power, Resistance, and Otherness (Peter Lang, 2014), which was named to Teen Vogue magazine’s “most epic feminist reading list ever” in 2015.