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Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Sundays at 1 pm Central on AM580

Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.

Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."

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Sunday, January 08, 2012

Tom Frank Discusses Pity the Billionaire

Thomas Frank is an American author, journalist and columnist for Harper's Magazine. He is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, authoring "The Tilting Yard" from 2008 to 2010. Frank is a historian of culture and ideas and analyzes trends in American electoral politics and propaganda, advertising, popular culture, mainstream journalism and economics. With his writing, he explores the rhetoric and impact of the 'Culture Wars' in American political life, and the relationship between politics and culture in the United States.

His new book, Pity the Billionaire, Frank examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American Right, and a wicked sense of humor, he gives the first full diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. The understanding Frank reaches is at once startling, original, and profound.

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This was a bit disappointing. Bob kept setting up perfect questions to knock out of the park with hopefully some extra keen insight, but the author kept failing to know even the basic nuances. Anyway, keep up the good work, and I'd love to hear from Yochai Benkler again with the current SOPA/PIPA stuff, or Chris Hedges with his new book coming out.

Posted by gus on 01/10 at 06:08 PM

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