Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was - What's the Matter with White People

I admire Joan Walsh for her knowledge of history. She learned a lot at U of Wisconsin, clearly In this book she does a wonderful job of integrating the autobiographical and her family history with recent developments in our political discourse. Relevant for Democrats also!

Joan Walsh explores previously uncharted territory when she dares to examine what Whites in this country refer to as the glory days, but which were actually days of struggling for validation and acceptance for so many others. We have been led to believe that Whites in this country long for days past in which they were revered and readily accepted after arriving here as immigrants. Joan breaks the silence about the early struggles of immigrants and debunks the myth that immigrants were readily accepted into the American fold.

Easy to read and an clear understanding as what is happening today. The manipulated efforts of Karl rove and the other evil cabal to separate ethnic groups and become the ruling class. I'm spreading the word that this is must read to those who really want to what is happening in this country. I am a 73 year African American woman.

In her memoir WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE? WHY WE LONG FOR A GOLDEN AGE THAT NEVER WAS (2012; paperback edition 2013), Joan Walsh covers the social and political issues that Philip Jenkins covers in his book DECADE OF NIGHTMARES: THE END OF THE SIXTIES AND THE MAKING OF THE EIGHTIES (2006), but she covers them in a more personal way by relating them to her family.

She also covers certain political and economic issues that Paul Krugman discusses in his insightful book THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL (2007; paperback edition 2009) and that Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson discuss in their perceptive book WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS: HOW WASHINGTON MADE THE RICH RICHER - AND TURNED ITS BACK ON THE MIDDLE CLASS (2010). As a matter of fact, she mentions Hacker and Pierson in several places in her book.

Joan Walsh is probably most widely known for appearing on Bill O'Reilly's Fox TV show the "O'Reilly Factor" in 2009, not long after an anti-abortion zealot shot Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, as he was serving as an usher during Sunday services at his Lutheran church.

I would not have the courage to appear on O'Reilly's TV show under any circumstances. So I have to admire her courage in appearing on his TV show under the circumstances that preceded and led up to her appearance. Unfortunately for her, she thereby opened herself up not only to O'Reilly's verbal abuse, but also to a lot of verbal abuse afterward from other people as well.

As a side note, I want to mention that in a dozen or so places in her book Joan Walsh discusses the paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan, who is an American Catholic from an Irish American background, as are Bill O'Reilly and Joan Walsh herself.

But throughout her book WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE? WHY WE LONG FOR A GOLDEN AGE THAT NEVER WAS, Joan Walsh (born 1958) refers to herself and her family as "Irish Catholics," even though the people she is referring to did not live and do not live in Ireland, but in the United States. I have a problem with her way of speaking.

Even though both my paternal grandparents were immigrants from Ireland, I have always thought that Irish Catholics were people who lived in Ireland and who happened to be Catholics. But I'm an American (born 1944). I don't live in Ireland. As a result, I have enormous difficulty understanding anyone who is a citizen of the United States describing herself repeatedly as an "Irish Catholic" - is she really so unacculturated in American culture that she sees herself as though she were born and raised and living in Ireland?

What's with her "Irish Catholic" shtick, eh? Why doesn't she refer to herself as an American Catholic, say, or as an Irish American? After all, we refer to Native Americans and African Americans.

In any event, she uses her "Irish Catholic" shtick repeatedly to claim that she comes from a white working class background, even though her father was a college-educated white-collar worker. (Disclosure: My father, a decorated World War II veteran, was not college-educated nor was he a white-collar worker. He was a high school graduate. For most of his adult life, he was self-employed. My mother had one year of secretarial training after she graduated from high school. After my father became self-employed, she helped him run his business. When I was growing up, both my father and my mother were Democrats.)

I am concerned about poor Americans and poverty in America, including the welfare of the white working class as well as other poor Americans who are not white. For this reason, I can relate to Joan Walsh's overall concern about the welfare of the white working class, provided that we do not overlook the welfare of other poor Americans who are not white.

Joan Walsh makes one cogent observation that may be an under-statement about how Democrats fight against Republicans and the Republican party: "Democrats just don't fight as passionately or as viciously as Republicans" (page 164).

On the next page, she says, "Weak Democrats and street-fighting Republicans helped make [George W.] Bush president, but so did the ideologically rigid left. Proclaiming no difference between [Governor George W.] Bush and [Vice President Al] Gore, prominent lefties from Michael Moore to Susan Sarandon, Barbara Ehreneich to Cornel West campaigned for Ralph Nader in 2000" (page 165).

In the next paragraph, she continues: "The out-of-touch left helped elect Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000. My father would have been screaming" (page 165).

But Joan Walsh herself reports these and other sad points about Democratic in-fighting in a studiously dispassionate way.

Now, when Democrats fight among themselves, their viciousness toward one another does at times unfortunately resemble the viciousness of Republicans fighting among themselves - trying to purge suspected liberal Republicans (so-called RINOs, Republicans in name only) from the Republican party. To a certain extent, Joan Walsh repeatedly calls attention to the viciousness of the in-fighting in the Democratic Party coalition.

I know, I know, the party-line is the party-line, whether the political party is the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. In part, the processes of forging the party line for either political party will involve in-fighting that can easily become vicious. But if these two American political parties want to win elections, they need to be coalitions that can appeal to a broad enough spectrum of American voters to win the elections, not just to voters who are ideological purists of the left or of the right.

Moreover, when it comes to public debate between Democrats and Republicans about political issues, arguably, Democrats should be commended for not being as vicious as Republicans in the Republican noise machine typically are. American political debate is not enriched by vicious Republicans such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

Nevertheless, when Democrats set out to fight Republicans, both Democratic candidates running for office and their Democratic supporters often do not seem to fight as passionately for their political issues as their opponents usually fight for theirs. For example, Republicans denouncing so-called big government sound and come across as passionate. But Democrats do not seem to muster as passionate a defense of government and the necessary roles it plays in running our lives.

Ironically, Joan Walsh herself does not sound passionate about any of her many political themes in this book. On the contrary, she sounds studiously dispassionate. Up to a point, I have no problem with that. But the major thrust of her argument regarding the white working class is that the Democratic Party should try to do more to appeal to the economic interests of the white working class and to be more inclusive of the white working class in its rhetorical appeals. Amen, I say to that much.

But I wish that she could have sounded more passionate about this theme. Perhaps she could have expanded this theme to take in other non-white Americans who are not enjoying economic prosperity either. After all, there are other themes in her book. In my estimate, the book would have been strengthened overall if she had allowed herself to sound more passionate about this one theme.

Next, in the spirit of playing the role of the Devil's Advocate, I want to comment on Joan Walsh's perceptive observation about protest movements and social change: "Republicans tried to demonize the protests, to scare Middle America, all to make us forget that, like it or not, social change requires agitation - or in Frederick Douglas's words, `Power concedes nothing without a demand'" (page 6).

Now, in the spirit of playing the role of the Devil's Advocate, I would point out that most of us are creatures of habit. Once we have become habituated to certain customs and customary ways of behaving, we may not always welcome social change. On the contrary, we may at times resist social change for the understandable reason that we do not care to have to change our customary ways of behaving.

Furthermore, one person's idea of political correctness may strike somebody else as just a racket to help favor and advance a certain person's career or the careers of people in a certain favored group. When political correctness tends to favor certain people in questionable ways that are debatable, oftentimes such unfair favoritism will lead to predictable backlash. Oftentimes, the backlash is understandable and may at times arguably be warranted and justified to curb excesses.

Moreover, we may at times have far more serious objections to proposed social changes - than simply being inconvenienced by them because they may require us to change out habitual attitudes and/or ways of behaving. For example, the debates about legalized abortion doubtless involve certain moral considerations that will take time for us to weigh and consider carefully.

Next, I want to suggest another way to understand what Joan Walsh refers to as identity politics. Historically, American prestige culture from colonial times to 1960 was dominated by WASPs and WASP culture (WASP = white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). But in the 1960 presidential election, Senator John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Even though JFK, like his father before him, was Harvard educated, he was not of Anglo-Saxon stock, but of Irish descent. Nor was he Protestant. He was Catholic. Therefore, JFK's election in 1960 to be president of the United States 1960 was a bit of a blow for the prestige WASP culture.

In a similar way, the election of Senator Barack Obama in 2008 to be president of the United States was also a bit of a blow to the prestige WASP culture, because he was not white but African American. But he was Protestant, and like JFK, he had a Harvard degree, albeit from the Law School in his case.

Now, historically, WASP culture was fractious, to say the least. But the people who were part of the WASP in-group were more or less united among themselves in considering non-whites and non-Anglo-Saxons and non-Protestants as lumped together as a collective out-group, or as a multiplicity of out-groups.

At least from JFK's election in 1960, the various groups who had historically been lumped together as out-groups have been vying with one another to establish themselves as part of the prestige culture in American culture today.

As everybody knows, American women, including women WASPs, have also been excluded historically from the prestige culture, with some notable exceptions. As a result, American women constitute another historical out-group that is now vying to establish itself in prestige culture.

Once American women entered the competition to establish themselves in prestige culture, they in effect re-defined old WASP conglomerate of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to include simple white males, with possible exceptions of certain white males being allowed if their group could claim special exemption for historical reasons. For example, white male Jews might be allowed an exemption for historical reasons, because of the old WASP prejudices against Jews. But white male Catholics were not allowed an exemption for historical reasons, despite the old WASP prejudices against Catholics. This is how I see what Joan Walsh and others refer to as identity politics.

Next, I want to generalize a bit here. The forces in ascendancy in American prestige culture have favored certain kinds of affirmative action for certain favored groups of people who had historically been discriminated against in employment and education. More broadly, the forces in ascendancy in American prestige culture over the last half century or so have favored what they consider to be diversity. These forces have been characterized by their political correctness.

But these forces have in turn generated an understandable backlash of counter forces of people who want to stand up to the forces in cultural ascendancy and fight them, including not only Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly, but also many of the people Joan Walsh refers to as the white working class.

Now, Joan Walsh perceptively credits Pat Buchanan and Richard Nixon with working out an effective strategy of divide and conquer, as she characterizes it. Through their effective use of the divide and conquer strategy, they managed to appeal to the resentments of the white working class and persuade many of them to vote for Republican candidates.

Well, turn-about is fair play, they say. In Joan Walsh's dispassionate concern for the white working class, there is an argument for the Democratic Party now to go to work on appealing to the economic interests on the white working class -- and other non-white economically disadvantaged Americans. In other words, it is time for the Democratic Party to turn the tables and employ the divide and conquer strategy against the Republicans by trying to divide the white working class from the Republican Party and thereby conquer more Republicans candidates in 2014 and 2016.

In short, the Democratic Party today should undertake to re-build the New Deal coalition that President Franklin D. Roosevelt built, but in a more expansive and inclusive way.

So let's test out this proposal against the concerns of women and the concerns for diversity.

Do women want to see the economic well-being of women in all classes improved? I hope they do.

Do the advocates of diversity want to see the economic well-being of the different groups they favor improved? I hope they do.

So improve the economic well-being of people in the working classes across the board - and everybody else's economic well-being will also be improved.

In short, I am not advocating trickle-down economics, but trickle-up economics. You can start trickle-up economics by improving the economic well-being of the people at the bottom of the American economy first. The multiplier effect of more dollars being spent by people at the bottom will help improve the economy for the middle class in due time.

Now, if Democratic politicians do not undertake to advance trickle-up economic measures, then they are collaborators in destroying the American Dream as we have known it.

It appears to me that a number of white Evangelical Protestants did not vote from Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election because they are religious purists who just could not bring themselves to vote for a Mormon to be president of the United States. But they may turn out and vote in the 2016 presidential election and in the 2014 mid-term elections.

In addition, I expect that the Republicans are going to learn from their mistakes in the 2012 presidential election. Yes, to be sure, Obama and the Democrats out-foxed Romney and the Republicans in certain ways. But Romney and the Republicans made too many mistakes. No, Obama did not win by a landslide. But his victory was decisive and impressive in light of the fact that the economy was not working in his favor. When you lose as decisively as Romney and the Republicans did, you had better learn from your mistakes, because political elections are about voter turn out and winning elections. You cannot make as many mistakes as Romney and the Republications made in 2012 and hope to win elections. Moreover, the Democrats cannot hope that the Republicans will make as many costly mistakes in the 2014 and the 2016 elections.

For these reasons and others, I am urging the Democrats to embrace trickle-up economics as soon as possible, because the 2014 and 2016 elections are fast approaching.

Despite my various criticisms of Joan Walsh in the present review, I have hope for her in the future. In her memoir, she is taking stock of herself and her life and her family and of American culture during her lifetime, with historical flashbacks regarding certain earlier events in American culture. She is well informed about American political history, and she is not a political purist, as certain American Catholics are, including more than a few who are Irish American (e.g., Cardinal Timothy Dolan).

An excellant description of the effects on a working class conservatives Irish famiLy of cultursl shifs around them in the turbulent 70s . The cracks that developed and the glue that holds them together. The book loses a lot of energy when the cast of blue collar workersAND intellectuals are replaced by current news makers. and commmentators. You miss the contradictios and stuggles of everyday people trying to follow their Christian, morality and patriotism while ,injustice and violence are disturbing their TV everynight.The first half is intimate warm and painfully honest oce the auther leaves her family mwe are in another and too familiar realm of what passes for thought and dialoge today.

This book speaks volumes of truth that are relative to the past and the future, which should be absorped by those of the present and made a point of reaquaintence for those who. Have forgotten the past.

It is an interesting book. It is written from the liberal perspective, but that is why it is so interesting. It reinforces my belief that the science of "Identity Politics" is little understood generally. The author, Joan Walsh, describes how ethnicity and identity can impact the American political process, through the lens of her own Irish Catholic upbringing and extended family. Personally, I feel she underestimates the destructive power of the trends released by Progressives: the politics of ethnic identity and multiculturalism.

For a better idea for what's in store read Samuel Huntington's "Who Are We?".

Best book about politics I have ever read. This book flows very well, is interesting and educational. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the politics and even people who don't.

This book is a must read. I am approximately the same age as Joan Walsh, so I was a witness to all of the dramatic social and political events she chronicals in the book. Her insight and brilliant writing make for wonderful explanations of why all of these events occurred. To me the book came as a sort of enlightenment. A way for me to understand what shaped the world I live in. I loved the book!

This is an extremely intelligent, engaging book on American politics that is also a memoir. It is written unabashedly from the perspective of a liberal Democrat who is an Irish-American, raised in a strongly Catholic home. Joan Walsh is an editor at Salon.com and a political analyst on MSNBC. I've watched her on TV and read some of her columns but I never guessed just how perceptive she is--or how tough in her appraisal of fellow Democrats. She gets to say a lot more in this book than she does as a talking head on television--and she has things to say that matter.

The book has a somewhat unfortunate, even deceptive title. First of all, Walsh doesn't find much wrong with white people except that the white working class and the labor movement have been largely abandoned by the Democratic party--or let us say the arugula wing of the Democratic party. Second, one would expect a snarky sociopolitical treatise from that title, but this book is not snide or condescending in tone. It is a much more personal book than you might expect. Walsh writes about her steadfast liberal father (who was educated by the Christian Brothers and was in many ways a traditional Catholic) and her mother, who was frightened by the chaos of the 60's and wound up voting for Nixon. The portraits of members of her family are vivid and often quite touching, and we see how these relationships impacted Walsh personally and politically. The image of her going to the ruins of the World Trade Center with her cousin, a member of the NYPD who tried to save survivors of 9/11, stays in my mind. Again and again, Walsh emphasizes her ties to her "people"--she sees herself as what she is, a daughter of the Irish Catholic working class. (The material on the historical journey of the Irish in America is fascinating.)

Walsh's description of how we got into the political straits we are in--how race and identity politics divided the Democratic party--is a shrewd summing up of 50 or so years of American politics. From a liberal point of view, it is often an account of mistakes and lost opportunities. Walsh may be overly kind of the Clintons, particularly Bill--never really noting how his personal failings played into his opponents' hands. But this is basically a balanced account. I could not help comparing her critical take on one prominent Democratic senator--by no means the worst of the lot--with a puff piece in the Times I happened to read around the same time. While supporting Obama, Walsh does not (thank heaven) idolize him. (A little known detail sticks in my mind. Have you noticed that credit card interest rates often now amount to usury--or what would have once been considered usury? Not too important, unless you are a struggling person who has to rely on this source of credit. Hillary as a senator voted to rein credit card interest in. Obama did not.) As Walsh sees it, Obama has a way to go before he can be regarded as a tribune of the working masses.

A strong central theme of the book is this: how do we get white working class--people like Joan Walsh's Irish Catholic relatives--back into the Democratic fold? (Hint: Maybe we should offer them some real, serious, bread-and-butter economic help?)

If you are a Republican you are probably not going to love this book. But I hope the president reads it, even if just to be reminded of what he of all people hopefully already knows. (Please, Mr. President. It's an enjoyable read.) I personally could not put it down. Highly recommended.

This entire book is a long winded new deal liberal trying to get a pass on being white because she comes from catholic Irish immigrants.This entire book is just a drawn out rationalization about that concept .

When the hardcover was released the subtitle was, "Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was." It changed with the issue of the paperback edition to read, "Finding Our Way in the Next America." A better idea, but in a polarized US, various factions actually want us to "find THEIR way" and to heck with ours.

Walsh's wide-ranging personal observations covering the last 40 years never really answered the "why" of the 2012 hard cover edition. Instead, she informally but closely pondered her Irish Catholic family background in NY, a personal account/perspective on the changes in the US political landscape since the end of the VIetnam War. The trouble with this approach, is that Walsh doesn't add anything new to this history, and which is more thoroughly and engagingly told in one of her sources for WtMwWP: Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland." Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Neither does she wade deep enough into the question posed by the primary title, "What's the Matter with White People." For me, that subject still needs to be more deeply and widely examined ....... and explained. On Aug. 1, 2014, an interviewee on CNN sized up the polarization of US politics (and culture) by noting that the political divide was boiling down to the Tea Party-infused (and conflicted) Republican Party -- evermore white and male -- vs. the Obama COALITION of women, minorities, independents and liberals of various stripes. To put a more polemical point on this issue, earlier in the year a Republican moderate fretted on MSNBC that his party was morphing into an angry, conspiracy-mongering, insurrectionist, neo-confederate movement -- on its way to becoming a regional party of the deep south and midwest.

Walsh's account does pick up the pace in the closing chapters of Part IV, "Some of My Best Presidents are Black." Her observations in this section stem from her journalism at Salon. This position put her on the front lines of the anti-Obama white conservative backlash. She covers this area well, and her contrast of her perspectives with those of another Irish Catholic, the reactionary Pat Buchanan, are lively. I also appreciated her excoriating of Democratic campaign operatives who routinely dismiss white working class voters (A reliable Republican voting bloc for decades) as "hopeless." She makes a good case that this group is ripe for recruitment to a re-tuned, overhauled liberalism in the 21st century.

In conclusion, I do encourage the reading of Walsh's WtMwWP if you are unfamiliar with the issues of the last 40 years. In this case, her personal account is a most helpful introduction, and her bibliography in the book's Acknowledgements will direct this kind of reader to more scholarly accounts.

3.5 stars.

The subject matter of this book is absolutely worth discussing. Unfortunately, Walsh is the least qualified person on Earth to have this discussion. This book is narrow-minded, solipsistic and poorly reasoned, written by a bourgeois button pusher. There are some decent insights about the atomizing of the American economy, and the ensuing tribalism of American politics. But she flubs the landing by heaping scorn on the white working classes "moral failing."

The white working class, and the working class in general, do not vote at the same rate suburban Mom fraus like Joan do. The people who vote Republican make $150,000 a year and drive F-150's. They live in the suburbs. There is no one on Earth more cloistered and reactionary than suburbanites.

A much better book is Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?", which I have a feeling Joan's book cribs from. Anyway, this book is bad, and so is Joan Walsh. Lefties excoriate the right for letting turnip-headed snake oil salesman create their narratives, they should heed someone like Joan Walsh as mostly the same.

Aristotle said in The Politics that "The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes." This is because if the lower class is in the majority the next step is revolution and if the upper class is in the majority society becomes unsustainable. When there is a limited, or worse, no middle class a slave society develops in which those on top are filled with arrogant entitlement and those on the bottom with envy. Joan's book shows a clear misunderstanding of the economic governing principles of society and why the United States will sink into further racial tension should income inequality continue to worsen. Ms Walsh is clearly out of touch with millennials which explains her recent criticisms of Bernie Sanders.

This is the first time in the history of our country that the middle class doesn't comprise the majority of the population. Reckless tax proposals like 65% estate taxes on the wealthy in order to give that treasure to the lower class is not the solution. Elitist lifetime tax and spend politicians are not the answer but the strengthening and growing of the middle class which even Joe Biden agrees represents "the backbone of our country" which was why he was given a special commission (which has failed) to stabilize it.

In conclusion, the poor writing style and ineffective arguments which are nothing more than propaganda and impassioned opinion make this a book worthy of a clear "pass". I could have saved quite a bit of time had the author simply wrote, "I want a woman for President" on a napkin and passed it to me at bar along with the peanut bowl.

I just finished reading "What's the Matter with White People?" by Joan Walsh, a book that I really enjoyed, an interesting ethnic history of America written from a family perspective, with an emphasis on the Nixon thru Obama years. Through much of the book I found myself thrilled to find that the author shared many of my own personal experiences and perspectives, particularly those involved with growing up in 1960s America and embracing political activism. The book contains plenty of food for thought.

I am not familiar with Ms. Walsh's work at Salon or at MSNBC, but she seems to be pretty adept at telling it like it is. I only found one chapter (the one about her marriage and raising her daughter) to be a bit out-of-place and less interesting, although it is certainly a part of the author's narrative. Like most books these days, there are several typographical errors that should have been caught and corrected by its editor (not the least of which was the misspelling of "Al Gor").

All in all, a very interesting read. I recommend the book to political junkies of all persuasions: Democrat, Republican or independent; liberal, conservative, or middle of the road.

Roger Ailes once said that he created Fox News so that people "aged 55 to dead" who sit on the couch all day with the remote in their hand would never have to look at people like Joan, or even admit they existed.

That tells me that Joan is someone worth listening to. Reading her book you understand why Ailes found her so dangerous - she is searching for ways to heal the divisiveness and bring Americans together, the last thing in the world he wanted as it got in the way of his primary ideology - making money off making old people scared and angry enough to vote against their best interests.

This highly readable book is an insightful history into how we arrived at this present, fraught moment, written for the "those that don't remember or understand history are doomed to repeat it" brigade.

Ailes is wrong, though. Given the chance to meet her and sit down and talk wth her, and I have been lucky enough to do, all those old people would happily put down their remote to talk to someone so intelligent, thoughtful, interested and interesting, committed to the true American dream of equality and justice for all.

This is the typical self-hating white person book that echo-chamber entrapped liberals love but it lacks originality. The author seems determined to just repeat the same garbage that every other left-leaning political commentator spews but it’s less interesting. I’ve seen better novels in Twitter posts.

For every legitimate argument Walsh makes, she adds another 10 that completely miss the mark. For all her suggestions of how to fix major problems in this country, she has recently made her living as a media surrogate for a candidate in Hillary Clinton who stands opposed to them. No doubt there are a lot of debatable issues when it comes to something as complex as the American economy and political environment, but when you suggest that the lower and middle classes have made even an ounce of progress in recent years, you disregard overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ms. Walsh has made news recently by attacking Clinton's primary opponent not on policy differences, trustworthiness, or effectiveness, but rather by attacking his supporters as being too white, too male, too hateful... Once again, she failed to produce actual evidence for these claims and in the process, attacked the most progressive senator in today's congress by misrepresenting his very identity. Ultimately, Walsh has a consistent style and if the store had a genre listing for Propaganda, that's where this would belong.

Excellent recap of recent politics seasoned with personal experiences with a sensibly balanced approach that sees many sides of issues. Not an answer but an intelligent exploration of whether we can ever find common ground.

First, thanks to Joan Walsh for being relatively frank (for a TV type) about her political background and therefore baggage. I wish that she taken a moment to spell out what the various key leftist talk items mean to her... I mean I could say "class war" and "working class" and quite possibly mean something very different from her. There are many examples of fuzzy 'movement terms', and if you can't read Joan's mind, you are out of luck if you care what it 'precisely' means. Also, the historical sections on the Black Irish were new to me... I had not heard the story every told quite so concisely and personally. Read this book (at least the first several chapters) to get this story, which has been overlooked in many, many other books that discuss American History.

The book has convinced me that Joan still, after all these years and no doubt endless pummeling by conservative commentators who she evidently did not listen to, cannot come up with a convincing list of why on earth anyone (other than the rich elites) would even consider voting Republican. Her go-tos are the obvious 'have vs. have not', various racial divides, etc. And none of these are convincing for Joan to believe that the motivation for voting Republican is anything other than fear... of having to give up one's social privilege ... etc. Hmmm. On this point, the book seems profoundly poorly researched, somewhat like the people who pontificate about the motivations of Al Queda (destroy our freedom?) without ever studying their rhetoric to get at what is really motivating them (preservation of the traditional family?).

At many points during this book and was scratching my head at her seeming life long failure to understand Republican motivations and intentions. If it really were a face value matter of voting to further enrich rich elites, then the Republicans would get about 1% of the vote and that would be the last we heard from them. There just has to be much more to the story beyond the politics of fear, which is equally applicable as a motivator on the Democrat side. What about "Makers vs. Takers"? How about the basic story of what motivates humans to do something useful vs. do something fun vs. do something harmful? What about 'a competitive world is better than a monopoly world' angle? (This latter view motivates both de-regulation and anti-statism) Don't look for anything like this in this book.

Joan thinks that it is high justice for coalition builders to string together a bunch of narrow interest groups to vote in the democrats, somehow missing that this is cynical and Machiavellian at best, given that the whole point is to advantage one group (of groups) vs. others. She seems to never have considered that "social justice" in practice means a mechanism for power to deliver individual injustice. Check into Nazi social justice regarding Jews, Gypsies, etc. Thinking and talking about social groups create dog-eat-dog dynamics with a huge burden of name-calling. Justice is a singular thing, and it exists only in context and that context is created only by individuals, choices and relationships.

Not that I am a Republican! I have worked hard to understand Rs and Ds, and the Rs have their severe blind spots, often revolving around property and money. Math (real rates of return) eventually drives all wealth into the pockets of those with assets attracting real rates of return, so the 'redistribution problem' is not only real but a consequence of the 'physics of money'. So concentration of wealth and power is a chronic problem in human history, and at the root of much conflict. The Democrats at least seem to get this.

But what about Joan? She's confused. And somewhat clueless beyond the old labels, categories and politics. And the reader? Annoyed that they spent so much time with someone who is not really that good of an analyst. Maybe Joan is good enough for Salon and TV, a depressing thought. Too bad this level of political discussion is so typical on all sides... lots of stuff being decried but not much of the hard project specifics that get everyone excited and on board.

This books three stars because of the Black-Irish story and the fact that it adds value to typical talking head commentary, which I suppose it is all of our fates to get stuck watching every now and then.

Walsh tells the story of many middle-class white families that have been divided by the political operatives that try to use race to convince whites that minorities are their enemies, rather than the 1% that pay the salaries of those operatives. Early in the Walsh family in America, it was the Irish that were the victims of Americans that had arrived before them. It is a sad tale of the anguish the divisions create among families and also of the separation of one ethnic group against another, just to benefit those in power.

The story becomes personal to Ms. Walsh, as she tells of how the Republicans developed the "Southern Strategy" after the Democrats passed the Civil Rights bills of the 60's. This evil strategy, designed for profit and power, has caused many family splits in America.

Ms. Walsh is ever hopeful that the liberals and progressives will seek out and work with the white working class as they are victims of the 1% along with the minorities of our society.

As Edward Kennedy often said, "The fight goes on."

For every legitimate argument Walsh makes, she adds another 10 that completely miss the mark. For all her suggestions of how to fix major problems in this country, she has recently made her living as a media surrogate for a candidate in Hillary Clinton who stands opposed to them. No doubt there are a lot of debatable issues when it comes to something as complex as the American economy and political environment, but when you suggest that the lower and middle classes have made even an ounce of progress in recent years, you disregard overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ms. Walsh has made news recently by attacking Clinton's primary opponent not on policy differences, trustworthiness, or effectiveness, but rather by attacking his supporters as being too white, too male, too hateful... Once again, she failed to produce actual evidence for these claims and in the process, attacked the most progressive senator in today's congress by misrepresenting his very identity. Ultimately, Walsh has a consistent style and if the store had a genre listing for Propaganda, that's where this would belong.

Excellent recap of recent politics seasoned with personal experiences with a sensibly balanced approach that sees many sides of issues. Not an answer but an intelligent exploration of whether we can ever find common ground.

First, thanks to Joan Walsh for being relatively frank (for a TV type) about her political background and therefore baggage. I wish that she taken a moment to spell out what the various key leftist talk items mean to her... I mean I could say "class war" and "working class" and quite possibly mean something very different from her. There are many examples of fuzzy 'movement terms', and if you can't read Joan's mind, you are out of luck if you care what it 'precisely' means. Also, the historical sections on the Black Irish were new to me... I had not heard the story every told quite so concisely and personally. Read this book (at least the first several chapters) to get this story, which has been overlooked in many, many other books that discuss American History.

The book has convinced me that Joan still, after all these years and no doubt endless pummeling by conservative commentators who she evidently did not listen to, cannot come up with a convincing list of why on earth anyone (other than the rich elites) would even consider voting Republican. Her go-tos are the obvious 'have vs. have not', various racial divides, etc. And none of these are convincing for Joan to believe that the motivation for voting Republican is anything other than fear... of having to give up one's social privilege ... etc. Hmmm. On this point, the book seems profoundly poorly researched, somewhat like the people who pontificate about the motivations of Al Queda (destroy our freedom?) without ever studying their rhetoric to get at what is really motivating them (preservation of the traditional family?).

At many points during this book and was scratching my head at her seeming life long failure to understand Republican motivations and intentions. If it really were a face value matter of voting to further enrich rich elites, then the Republicans would get about 1% of the vote and that would be the last we heard from them. There just has to be much more to the story beyond the politics of fear, which is equally applicable as a motivator on the Democrat side. What about "Makers vs. Takers"? How about the basic story of what motivates humans to do something useful vs. do something fun vs. do something harmful? What about 'a competitive world is better than a monopoly world' angle? (This latter view motivates both de-regulation and anti-statism) Don't look for anything like this in this book.

Joan thinks that it is high justice for coalition builders to string together a bunch of narrow interest groups to vote in the democrats, somehow missing that this is cynical and Machiavellian at best, given that the whole point is to advantage one group (of groups) vs. others. She seems to never have considered that "social justice" in practice means a mechanism for power to deliver individual injustice. Check into Nazi social justice regarding Jews, Gypsies, etc. Thinking and talking about social groups create dog-eat-dog dynamics with a huge burden of name-calling. Justice is a singular thing, and it exists only in context and that context is created only by individuals, choices and relationships.

Not that I am a Republican! I have worked hard to understand Rs and Ds, and the Rs have their severe blind spots, often revolving around property and money. Math (real rates of return) eventually drives all wealth into the pockets of those with assets attracting real rates of return, so the 'redistribution problem' is not only real but a consequence of the 'physics of money'. So concentration of wealth and power is a chronic problem in human history, and at the root of much conflict. The Democrats at least seem to get this.

But what about Joan? She's confused. And somewhat clueless beyond the old labels, categories and politics. And the reader? Annoyed that they spent so much time with someone who is not really that good of an analyst. Maybe Joan is good enough for Salon and TV, a depressing thought. Too bad this level of political discussion is so typical on all sides... lots of stuff being decried but not much of the hard project specifics that get everyone excited and on board.

This books three stars because of the Black-Irish story and the fact that it adds value to typical talking head commentary, which I suppose it is all of our fates to get stuck watching every now and then.

Walsh tells the story of many middle-class white families that have been divided by the political operatives that try to use race to convince whites that minorities are their enemies, rather than the 1% that pay the salaries of those operatives. Early in the Walsh family in America, it was the Irish that were the victims of Americans that had arrived before them. It is a sad tale of the anguish the divisions create among families and also of the separation of one ethnic group against another, just to benefit those in power.

The story becomes personal to Ms. Walsh, as she tells of how the Republicans developed the "Southern Strategy" after the Democrats passed the Civil Rights bills of the 60's. This evil strategy, designed for profit and power, has caused many family splits in America.

Ms. Walsh is ever hopeful that the liberals and progressives will seek out and work with the white working class as they are victims of the 1% along with the minorities of our society.

As Edward Kennedy often said, "The fight goes on."

This book is great addition to that pile of debris you have stacked up by the burn pile. If you want to hear what a hateful hypocritical racist has to say then buy this book. She may even criticize you for doing so

Joan Walsh is a treasure -- an intelligent, articulate Kennedy liberal who has not lost her humanity in the 50 years since JFK. In "What's the Matter..." she tells the American political story alongside her own family's history. Informing her family narrative is the myth of the "black Irish," those dark-haired sons and daughters of Erin who were (perhaps) descendants of some swarthy Moor in ages past. Walsh's father used the myth to help himself and her identify with the black struggle for civil rights in the 1960s.

Walsh dissects the fractures between the FDR coalition of working class blacks and whites -- natural allies due to their similar economic woes -- and the way they were exploited by Republicans and ignored by Democrats. It's not a pretty picture, but instructive for anyone trying to understand how America got to be where it is today.

Walsh writes with passion, humor and style. Her analysis of history is right on (to this center-left liberal). It was enlightening, and disheartening, to read her picture of the missed legacy of Bobby Kennedy. In the fractious 60s, he was perhaps the only national politician who could reach out to disenfranchised blacks, impoverished whites, women and wealthy Democrats. The nation lost more than a Senator when he was gunned down. Walsh's personal story also tells of the wooing of the white working class by Richard Nixon's divide-and-conquer strategy. Seeing her police and firefighter uncles peeling away from the Democrats was an object lesson in how a united coalition can be split against its own interests for the political benefit of one party.

Walsh ends the book with a synopsis of the last 10 years, fighting right-wing media types like Bill O'Reilley, Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan -- ironically, all of Irish extraction like herself. I skimmed this part of the story because it was too familiar (I am a regular reader of her work on Salon) and too depressing. She ends in early 2012, with the Obama/Romney campaign in full swing.

It was terrific to see a broad review of the nation is it struggled to deal with civil rights, the shrinking middle class, war and divisive cultural issues. "What's the Matter with White People," despite the unfortunate suggestion of its title, provides the long view that so many of us dearly need.

recently reviewed in the PEOPLE'S WORLD, [...]

What's the matter with white people?

Mark Gruenberg

WASHINGTON - Building on its stereotype of African-Americans from 30 years ago, the Republican Party has made "cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers into its new 'welfare queens,'" an author of a new book about the alienation of the white working class says.

The catch, adds Joan Walsh, author of What's The Matter With White People?" is that the workers and families being demonized, alienated from their ancestral roots in the Democratic Party by the tumult of the late 1960s and early 1970s, don't realize that's the Republican attitude - and keep voting against their own economic interests.

Walsh, a self-described "white working class Irish kid from Long Island" offered that analysis at a recent book talk at the AFL-CIO. But she said not all the blame should be laid at the feet of the GOP. The Democrats themselves moved away from white workers, including those whom organized labor represents.

"It's an incredibly divisive notion to have 'people-of-color coalitions," excluding whites, she said. "White liberals and progressives are the worst on this. They're looking down on the white working class."

The reaction and the key turning point there, she added, was the 1970 confrontation in New York between construction workers and anti-war protesters, which Richard Nixon and a succession of Republican politicians have exploited.

That exploitation has reached all the way to the 2012 vote. Opinion polls show that Democratic President Barack Obama's weakest group is white working-class men, again, although there is a regional division to that weakness, Walsh adds.

"In the South, he's trailing by about 40 percentage points," she notes. "But he's ahead in the Midwest and tied in the West and Northeast," Walsh says. Obama is also running ahead of his 2008 figures among white working class women and Catholics.

Nevertheless, Republicans - she cited former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who finished second to Mitt Romney in the GOP race, plus Romney himself - keep exploiting the Democratic divide, while hiding their own strategy.

"It gives them the chance to break through where they couldn't do so before" 1970, Walsh explained.

"Mitt wants to write off 47% of the country?" she asked, referring to Romney's infamous remarks at a Florida fundraiser about people who are "victims" and who expect government support. "Well, most of them are white and a quarter of them are seniors." By bringing those voters back, "We have the opportunity to make the country more stable,"

Audience members described similar attitudes among white working-class voters they interviewed. One Fire Fighter recalled his recent canvassing in Danville, Va., in the southwestern area of the state - an area hard hit by past factory closures.

The biggest source of jobs there now is government, but GOP budget cutting slashed those jobs, too. "It's been positive but scary. I told them there are a lot of Fire Fighters and police officers who don't have a job," he said. "The room was dead silent."

For the Republicans, her own Long Island relatives and those white working-class people, "the face of welfare is black," contrary to actual statistics, Walsh replied. "But white poverty and unemployment has doubled, and we have to validate that" to bring those voters back. "It'll be a tough slog," she admitted.

The mass media doesn't help, Walsh noted. Many of the hardest-hit white working class voters "get their facts from Fox," known for its aggressive Right Wing bias. Fox network chief "Roger Ailes told me they have a target audience: 'Age 55 to dead,' and they're whipping them up into a frenzy."

But the Occupy movement may help start returning those voters to pocketbook voting, Walsh adds, by putting the issue of rising income inequality and the decline of the middle class squarely at the forefront of the national discussion.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who hosted the discussion, said the labor movement is trying to do its part, through creation and campaigning by Working America, its affiliate for workers who could be sympathetic to the movement's goals, but who can't or won't, join unions. Working America now has more than 3 million members, with tens of thousands of them in battleground states, such as Ohio.

Their efforts are effective, because Working America volunteers are listening to and having discussions with voters, one by one, and adjusting accordingly, he stated. In the 2008, he claimed, voters contacted by Working America - a group prior surveys show is whiter, more working-class and more conservative than the union movement - voted for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama by a 3-to-1 ratio. That was higher than Obama's ratio among unionists, Trumka said.

"When they get information one-on-one, it moves them dramatically," Trumka concluded of the white working class.

Ms. Walsh's personal journey kept me interested and reading throughout. I was surprised at the political developments she understood as a child and as a teenager. She pulled together many treads of her family's history and personalities to weave together her politics. The title of the book, however, is a bit deceiving. She really doesn't answer the question in a broad sense; she answers it personally within her own family. The golden age she refers to is not the '50's, but the '70's, which surprised me. And really, there was no "golden age" as she surmised in her book. I recommend the book for the depth of political insight Joan brings to the book, not for the answer she poses as the question in the title. Thanks, Joan, for your personal insights, the joyful, painful, embarrassing, and courageous journey you took me through. I now know the person and and viewpoint of the "talking head" I listen to on the shows of MSNBC and your writings for the Salon.

Great book! How did I miss this riviting political analysis- where had I'd been? Well, Ms. Walsh writes with eloquent accessibility - never dull-- always penetrating and ,at times, deeply personal insights. I read What's the Matter With White People in two days.
Thank you Joan. Buy this book!
---Mike: FSC--get it Joan?

A resonant and highly readable political memoir that attempts to unlock some of the most stubborn mysteries of modern politics, including why false promises work so well, without falling back on the tempting conclusion that people are just dumb. Walsh writes from a highly personal perspective, and it works.

Excellent and compelling! The research it took to put this wealth of history together is most impressive. I'd like to thank and congratulate this author for edifying and entertaining me with her work.

A 'must read' to prepare for the November election. Personal, funny, insightful. Lots of fuel for late-night talks about the elections, why peoples' politics are what they are, and how they're likely to change.

This year has seen three books by MSNBC personalities: Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and now Joan Walsh. I've read all three -- and while Maddow and Hayes's books are fantastic, they're not memoirs -- I can't make books on political elites or the military industrial complex into bedtime reading! Walsh's book, on the other hand, is a deeply personal look at the US political landscape during the past five decades. I love how Walsh connects her own Irish Catholic, working class upbringing to the unhinging of the Democratic coalition in the late 60's and 70's. She speaks from a deeply personal and human perspective, and yet doesn't miss a beat in describing in great detail the economic and political events that brought us to the Tea Party and failures of the current Democratic administration to confront a recalcitrant Republican congress (elected by working class whites!) on behalf of those same working class citizens. A most enjoyable read.

Frances Langum
The Professional Left Podcast

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, the life of the law is not
logic but experience.

With great insight and sense of fairness, Joan Walsh uses her own life
experience to show the journey from the post-WWII sense of community
to the current view of one political party, that greed is good, Gordon
Gekko was right, and "I've got mine the hell with you" is their dogma.

After World War Two there was a consensus that the government had big role
in people's lives, to provide good public schools, good roads and bridges,
good public colleges, and that we were all in this together.

Sadly that is not where we are today. One party believes that democracy
is too important to be left to the voters and voter suppression is
party policy. The other believes in fairness and a commitment to equality.

This is a terrific book.

Even if you don't typically agree with the author's politics - and maybe especially if you don't! - you will consider this book relevant, insightful and thoroughly engaging. It's an honest, personal and extremely thoughtful discussion of race, class and politics in the context of contemporary American history and the author's own family. While you may not agree with all of the assertions, you're guaranteed to come away with a more compassionnate understanding of the conflicting emotions and voting habits of America's middle class today.

Another way to breed racism. This is all propaganda for the left. Thanks to people like this their are more racist in the U.S.A (both black and white ). It is adolescent but works just the same.

This book is nothing more than an elitist white lady complaining to anybody who will listen... I shouldn't have wasted my money with buying it and I'm disappointed that I will never get the wasted time back...

Joan reminds me of paid black commentators that come on Fox news to trash the African American community. Rather than provide something insightful about racial dynamics, she relies on tired left-wing cliches used to cynically win elections.

If only the store allowed a negative star rating!

Having said that, Joan Walsh would love nothing more than to see white people disappear from the earth. Seriously, she is that demented.

This book of her is a boring read, completely biased, filled will over the top liberal rhetoric and the racism on display is found throughout the book. Its hard for me to imagine that she can be that stupid, so that leaves me believing that she plays the "hatred for white people" up so hard because it gets her attention (still hasn't found a husband as far as I know) and gets her paid (by the liberal media like Salon).

On the practical side, the book is poorly edited, lacks an material of interest, and jumps from idea to another with no real cohesion.

My question for Joan Walsh is "What's the Matter with You?: Finding Your Way out of the Gutter".

The book itself proved interesting and took an honest and refreshing approach towards looking back over the past 50 or 60 years in an effort to define where the "American Dream" has gone off the tracks. I very much look forward to finishing the book; however, when the book arrived it was missing and as i started reading I noticed the book was missing a significant chunk of pages. I got to around page 183 or so, then the book skipped forward to page 215, then further on in the book, say around page 250 or so, it went back again to page 215 and pages were repeated. Visually the book was not damaged in any way, just missing a chunk of pages in the middle and then out of order towards the end as I described. The book had been ordered by clicking on the the store.com Link, which means it was drop shipped (money transaction handled by a middle man and then actually shipped from a separate warehouse). When I called the customer service number supplied, I was greeted by someone who was less than polite, but then became somewhat more helpful as the conversation carried on. Bottom line, I had to take time to ship the book back, at my expense up front, and was promised a replacement book would be shipped to me in return along with a refund up to $3.99 on any postage required to return the defective book. At this point, now 3 weeks out, I have received a credit for the postage I spent to return the defective book, but still haven't received a replacement book, nor has my original purchase been refunded. I just called this morning and talked to the same Customer Service Rep and was told, "Sweetie, I can't control how long it takes the publisher to send you your new book". like i said, the book itself was interesting, and I would like to finish reading it when and if it ever arrives. Customer service has been lacking in this matter and overall I'm not too pleased in that regard. Hopefully this is an isolated incident and I just happened to be unlucky enough to have been the one effected by it.

Disclaimer: I did not read this book. But, I just heard her interviewed on the radio and was a bit 'taken-a-back' and a bit sad. Taken-a-back because she sounded a bit wacky and one wonders how people like her get airtime. I simultaneously felt sad, for us readers, because I think many of us really long for honest dialogue about a host of issues, not just race. True discovery and understanding without the ideological marinade is so dang hard to get. I am getting increasingly tired of spending money on Republican as well as Democratic books that fail to deliver either objectivity or solutions..

Please don't read this book. It is propaganda. When the author isn't bashing one group of people based on their race, she's glorifying another group, because of their race.

I am sorry I tried to read it and no I didn't finish it. My only consolation is that I bought it for 10c at garage sale. I rarely write book reviews. But I looked this one up so I could warn others before they wasted their money.

Please read F. A. Hyack's "Road to Serfdom". It will explain all you need to know about economic crisis.