Frankly Speaking: Why liberals will miss Barney Frank's voice, especially in the culture wars.

[ellisonz]

Barney Frank was one of a few liberals who could fight conservatives in the culture wars—and win. Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

By David Weigel|Posted Monday, Nov. 28, 2011, at 9:05 PM ET
House Financial Services Committee ranking member Barney Frank.,119678034MW004_FED_CHIEF_BE

Politicians like to use retirement speeches to criticize the systems that have so disappointed them. Rep. Barney Frank embraced that tradition on Monday with his copyrighted mix of derision and bluntness.

“People on the left and people on the right live in parallel universes,” he mused. “No longer do people get their information from a common media source, and then diverge in how they interpret it. The left is on MSNBC and on the blogs. The right is on Fox and on talk radio. And what happens is, people know different facts. These are echo chambers. People hear agreement with themselves.”

The point he was trying to make: Voters needed to share some of the blame for how lousy their government had become. They hustled moderates out of office, and they demanded crazy things of people like Frank. Still: Sad denunciations of our polarized media? Really? Didn’t Evan Bayh cover that when he retired?
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It was strange to hear Frank tooting from that bugle. Polarized media and political debate has generally been better for Republicans than it’s been for Democrats. One exception was Barney Frank. No liberal politician—none who had to face voters every two years—was so at home in the culture wars.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/11/barney_frank_retires_why_the_democrats_will_miss_his_voice_.single.html

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My favorite part: If I’d written Frank an angry letter, I might have gotten the response he once sent to a crank in his district: “I'm surprised to find absence of explicit anti-Semitism this time. Was a page missing?”

[knowbody0]

1. he's a national treasure

and my guess is he's not even half done fixing this dung

[ellisonz]

2. They should put him on MSNBC.

Shit can Ratigan ;-)

[Lasher]

3. One of my very favorite members of Congress.

I was saddened to hear he won't run again.

[ellisonz]

4. Hopefully we can still keep the seat.

It will be interesting to see it play out.

[Lasher]

5. I saw a news segment about this on TV.

They said we should have no trouble holding the seat. But there will never be another Barney Frank.

[ellisonz]

6. Hopefully. We need to take back the House.

That's probably true, but I'd like to think Barney's inspired some people...