The Amateur Hour Gabfest
Listen to Slate's show about Scott Walker, Bill Clinton’s frenemy behavior, and Jack Hitt’s new book, A Bunch of Amateurs.
Posted Friday, June 8, 2012, at 12:22 PM ET
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On this week’s Slate Political Gabfest, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson discuss Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall election and Bill Clinton’s off-message campaign remarks, and they interview Jack Hitt about his new book, A Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character.
Here are some of the links and references mentioned during this week's show:
- John’s Slate piece on Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin.
- A Wall Street Journal report on the drop in Wisconsin’s unions’ membership.
- Ron Brownstein’s National Journal column on how Obama is losing white working class voters.
- John’s Slate piece on Bill Clinton’s off-message remarks on Bain, Romney, and tax cuts.
- A statement by Bill Clinton’s spokesman after Clinton’s CNBC interview.
- Jack Hitt’s book, A Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character.
- Doree Shafrir’s Slate review of Hitt’s book.
John chatters about a new book put out by the Library of Congress, Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art.
Emily chatters about the unpopularity of the Senate and lifetime judicial appointments as expressed by contributors to Slate’s Hive series, “How Can We Fix the Constitution?”
David chatters about a pair of New York Times articles: The first about a Buddhist couple that lived no more than 15 feet apart from one another and the second about the bizarre twist in the story that ended in a death. You can find his Slate experiment trying to live no more than 15 feet apart from his wife, Hanna Rosin, here.
The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Andrew Bouvé and Dale Willman. Links compiled by Aviva Shen.
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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and writes about law, family, and kids. Her forthcoming book, Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Empathy and Character, will be published in February. Find her at emilybazelon@gmail.com or on Facebook or Twitter.
John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com. Read his series on the presidency and his series on risk. Follow him on Twitter.
David Plotz is the Editor of Slate. He's the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank and Good Book. He appears on Slate's Political Gabfest.