rebecca traister

This week's special feature delves into the who, the what, and the why of the Tea Party. As the left grapples with the reality that tea partiers may be more than a passing trend, what should we know about who these people are who funds them? Is the left fighting against them or enabling them? And most importantly, what can be done to turn things around? Laura's new book is out on October 20 and tackles precisely the above: At the Tea Party: The Wing Nuts, Whack Jobs, and Whitey-Whiteness of the New Republican Right and Why We Should Take It Seriously features contributions from Max Blumenthal, Alexander Cockburn, Lisa Duggan, Glenn Greenwald, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Hedges, and Jim Hightower amongst many others. Three of the book's contributors, and GRITtv favorites, join us today: Richard Kim is the senior editor of The Nation and co-editor of Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, an American Nightmare, Rebecca Traister, senior staff writer for Salon.com and the author of Big Girls Don't Cry, and historian Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland. Ella Es El Matador, or "She Is The Matador", is a documentary film directed by Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco. Using as a launching pad a 1908 Spanish law barring women from bullfighting, Ella Es El Matador tackles the history of women in the ring, as well as the dangerous dance with Spanish ideas of masculinity that woman bullfighters engage with everytime they spin their cape. Special thanks to Women Make Movies, the film's distributor.

Every day, the story changes. Sarah Palin's the leader of the Republican party--except that she can't raise money. Eliot Spitzer is a disgrace (but has a TV show), and David Vitter can run for reelection on a "family values" platform. The NAACP wants the Tea Party movement to declare itself not racist, and suddenly the NAACP is racist. And we can't even get started on the BP disaster--mostly because BP won't let reporters near the scene of the crime. Who can make any sense out of all this? Thankfully, we have expert political observers Rebecca Traister of Salon.com and Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker join us in studio to try.