Good News and Bad News

     I had ignorantly criticized Thomas Frank's book on "What's the Matter with Kansas."  In part, without reading the book, I was right.  Much of the book was not news to me, even as Frank's perspective, being a Kansas native and high school right-winger was perhaps the most interesting presentation of the material.  The story of Mr Galbo being the only thing that really made me pause.  Texas religified its state GOP around the same time, and in the same manner, as in Kansas, and I'd already a bit about that in Ivins' book Shrub.  Still, he's not at all a bad writer (certainly when compared with the sentence-twisting author of this blog), and lots of material that, as a Democrat from somewhere outside the plains, you might want to know.  Kansas historical factors, for instance.  I'm not quite done, but I'm not sure Franks "gets it" (of course, outside me, who does?)

     Bad news is that Arianna Huffington's attempt to unite the left and right in a blog sucks.  She's got Joe Scarborough, for pete's sake, and Walter Cronkite being an addled old man.  Bob Evans (I've read the first chapter of the Kid Stays in the Picture, the autobiography of the man who turned Paramount around by producing Love Story and some other hits from before my time) has a bit.