The New York Times Is Calling It Compassionate, Right?

At the time, I always saw it framed as sympathy for poor rural whites and almost like a distraction from the very obvious racism that drove Trump's victory in the election. There was this weird explosion after the election of looking for any explanation other than like the most obvious one. And so it's weird that the actual book is like blaming rural whites. But the framing of the book by people who didn't read it or people like me who just read reviews was exonerating rural whites.