Amy's Robot

Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the controversy

Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the controversy her book Nickel and Dimed caused at UNC-Chapel Hill.

On July 10, a group of conservative UNC-CH students calling themselves Committee for a Better Carolina, held a press conference, along with a handful of rightwing state legislators, to denounce "Nickel and Dimed" as a "classic Marxist rant" and a work of "intellectual pornography with no redeeming characteristics." Fine, at least I could cling to the adjectives "classic" and "intellectual." But when I read the full page ad the Committee for a Better Carolina had taken out in the Raleigh News and Observer, I saw that this controversy was less about the book than it was about me. The ad charged me with being a Marxist, a socialist, an atheist, and a dedicated enemy of the American family – [...] I was greeted on North Carolina radio talk shows by hosts asking, "What does it feel like to be the Antichrist in North Carolina?" and similarly challenging inquiries.

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