Michael Workman

Howard Dean may have not managed to get himself elected president, but his ability to speak with conviction still makes him a rock star with the Left.

Just ask anybody in the two-thirds full audience at the Harold Washington Library, who are there to catch author and former Chicagoan Tom Frank hold court with Dean and Chicago eminence Studs Terkel. Technically, the event is a book-tour stop for Frank's newest polemic, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" And while Dean takes pains to point out why he's here, he is also working the grass-roots circuit for the Democratic effort. All three clearly admire one another; the audience clearly admires them all. Yet for Dean, the event is more political than personal: not once does he take a seat across from the podium with Terkel. No need. Instead, he mounts the podium and the oratory begins.

Terkel has to use both hands to lift a bottle of water as he listens to Dean raise applause on his behalf as "a man who has dedicated his entire life to working people." Both the scruffy writer and the trimly dressed public intellectual listen as the whirlwind whirls, ratcheting up the intensity for a scant few moments while talking about the Bush administration. Nothing blustery, mostly a reassertion of the need for intellectual honesty in politics, and how his determination to speak his mind won the trust of voters across the country, however short-lived his tenure in the race.

When Terkel finally takes the podium, he joins in the indictment of the current president and his cronies. Terkel speaks bewilderedly of the corruption of language that has occurred during the Bush administration's reign, citing the newly negative connotations of the word "liberal." Used to be that to insult somebody, you called them a commie. Now calling somebody a liberal carries much the same negative weight. "Maybe," Terkel says, gesturing to the seated Frank, "that's what's the matter with Kansas." He lauds Frank for practicing a type of muckraking journalism all too lacking in today's blinkered media environment. When Frank himself comes up to speak, he sticks to his role as promoter, reading directly from the book's first chapter. Frank's choice to read rather than speak is a little jarring at first, given Dean's insistence on the need for unscripted speaking of one's mind.

At the Q&A afterward, Frank has to repeat questions from the audience for the hard-of-hearing Terkel while questioners wait patiently for an answer. How could they not? It may be Frank's book and it was once very much Dean's party. But this is still definitely Studs Terkel's city.

(2004-06-22)

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