Boy, I Wonder How the Folks at Salon Feel About Ayn Rand

This week in Salon‘s troll-the-libertarians business
model:

Before I say anything about the interview, I should note that I
think Ehrenreich is one of the better writers working on the left
these days. I haven’t spent any time with her most famous text,

Nickel and Dimed—I’d rather read an actual poor
person’s account of her life, not a successful writer’s Poor
Like Me stunt book—but I think
Dancing in the Streets,
Fear of Falling, and
For Her Own Good all have interesting ideas to impart,
and I’ve heard good
things about
Bright-Sided. Within the world of people able to use
the phrase “decade of greed” with
a straight face, her work is worthier than most.

Furthermore, I’ve just said more
nice things about Ehrenreich in one paragraph than I’ve ever
said about Ayn Rand. Seriously: Looking back on a quarter
century as a libertarian writer, I can recall only one
occasion where I wrote something positive about Rand, way back in
the ’90s—and even that wasn’t a case of me taking pleasure in her
work so much as it was a case of me taking pleasure in the fact
that it was now possible to read her in the former Communist bloc.
I’ve never been a Randian, and when I take part in
intra-libertarian debates about Rand, it’s usually to criticize
her.

I say all that just to make it clear that if any Reason
writer might conceivably take pleasure in watching Barbara
Ehrenreich attack Ayn Rand, it’s probably me. But I can’t
watch Ehrenreich attack Rand, because despite the impression
that Salon‘s headline might give, she never attacks.
Frank has a lot to say about Rand, but Ehrenreich replies
with a big (I paraphrase) “yeah, maybe, I never paid much attention
to her.” Somehow, this exchange occupies nearly 300 words of the
interview and gives the piece its headline.

Here’s the relevant part of the conversation:

Q: Reading about the teenage you, I kept thinking of
Ayn Rand. And Ayn Rand is the preeminent philosopher of teenagers.
They love her. She’s huge when readers are in high school. And
there’s a strong whiff of Ayn Rand in the teenage Barbara. Think
about it: the atheism, the primacy of reason, the horror of feeling
responsibility for your fellow humans, which you describe very
vividly. The solipsism, the complete selfishness. This is all her.
And yet, you grow up and take it all in a very different
direction.

A: I was not consciously that interested in Ayn Rand. I read a
novel. I probably read “Atlas Shrugged”…

Q: Or “Fountainhead” maybe?

A: Yeah, one of those and [I thought], “I don’t know, that’s pretty
interesting.” But no, philosophically, I just thought of her as
light entertainment.

Q: I think of your life story. You might not know this but the
whole plot of “Atlas Shrugged” is a strike. It’s a strike novel.
The billionaires go on strike. Because they have agency and they
are geniuses and the rest of us are subhuman. You’re the anti-Ayn
Rand.

A: One strand in here is from my upbringing. The
blue-collar roots and the lingering royalty [sic] to Butte
(Montana) and all that it stood for. It was a very big principle in
my upbringing that you should respect everybody’s work. The street
sweeper. Everybody. You should never look down on anybody for their
work.

Q: Of course with Rand it’s different. You respect engineers and
geniuses…

A: Oh no. The whole Butte spirit was, you don’t respect anybody in
a suit, ever.

Q: So it’s the opposite of Ayn Rand. It’s exactly the
opposite.

How lucky Salon is to have an interviewer as intrepid
as Thomas Frank, a man who will go to such lengths to ferret out
his feelings on a subject and to share his findings with the person
he’s interviewing.