right

"In truth, we face the sobering reality that capitalism?s latest crisis - complete with bank failures, corporate bailouts, rising unemployment, and declining wages - has aided the right, not the left. How can we explain the capacity of the right to benefit from and redirect the bitterness and discontent that derives from capitalism?s own failures?" Peter Bratsis wrote a provocative piece for The Indypendent about the Tea Party movement and the crisis on the left -- and he joins Laura in studio to discuss it. Are we missing passion and emotional appeals in our quest to be rational?

The other day on the show, Melissa Harris-Lacewell suggested media "need to be covering the left as much as we cover, with anxiety, the right.” Anxiety reached a fever pitch Tuesday night with the Tea Party primary victory for Christine O'Donnell, anti-masturbation crusader, in Delaware's Senate race. The New York Times breathlessly headlines “G.O.P. Insurgents Win in Del. and N.Y.” and goes on for several paragraphs without even mentioning Democratic primaries, let alone noting that there were some insurgent victories there as well.

GRITtv is off to Netroots Nation in Las Vegas, but before we headed out, we spoke to Sam Seder, who beat us there by a day or so. Former Air America host Seder will be on a panel with Laura and others on the demise of Air America, and we'll be conducting interviews all weekend. As the progressive netroots gather, of course, the big story this week was a falsified video broken by a right-wing blog, and Seder explained why an equivalent story would never happen on the left. The problem isn't the medium, blogs and bloggers, Seder notes, it's a lack of accountability for right-wing "journalists."

Even before the ascension to public consciousness of a right-wing libertarian named Rand, Ayn Rand has been a hot topic of conversation. From threats from the right to "Go Galt" after Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" hero to the downfall of Alan Greenspan, the fingerprints of the novelist/philosopher/heroine of freemarketeers everywhere have been all over the last couple of years in U.S. politics. Just what was it about Ayn Rand that attracted so many followers, and what is it about her books that keeps them flying off the shelves? We ask Corey Robin, Brooklyn College professor and author of a new piece on Rand at The Nation, and Eesha Pandit, feminist philosopher and Director of Advocacy at MergerWatch, to tell us what everyone sees in Ayn Rand, and explain why we should be concerned about her influence.