The Original Moonbat

Ahab at If I Ran the Zoo comments on Peggy Noonan, erstwhile Reagan speechwriter, predicting that reading books will become The Next Big Thing.

Peggy sez:

...It is a relatively inexpensive (libraries, Kindle, Amazon), peaceful and enriching activity. And we're about to enter an age of greater quiet. More people will be home, not traveling as much to business meetings or rushing out to the new jobsite. A lot of adults are going to be more in search of guidance and inspiration. The past quarter century we've had other diversions, often expensive ones—movies, DVDs, Xboxes. Books will fit the quieter future.

Ahab, quite rightly, snorts at that.

Peg's politics have provided us with expensive diversions too, of course. But somehow she neglects to mention Iran-Contra, impeachment, stolen elections, stupid wars, drowned cities, wrecked economies, etc., etc., etc. Our coming "age of greater quiet" is really just another in this series. And likewise, for what purpose does Peggy suppose people might now seek "guidance and inspiration" but to extricate themselves from the devastation that is the culmination of her politics?

My own comment on the quote goes to the idiotic, airy-fairy, typically Noonanesque mind-set behind it.

The reason Peggy always comes across as such a space pilot is because she insists on romanticizing and elevating her every stray thought and experience into vanguards of the New Zeitgeist.

I mean, really. Because SHE is enjoying the quiet pleasures of reading right now, everyone else not only should but will be doing the same in the days to come. And so she must come up with her typically airy-fairy reasons why this will happen.

It's disturbing that she seems to be looking FORWARD to that "quieter" future in which "people will be home, not traveling as much to business meetings or rushing out to the new jobsite" because...and notice that she is not so indelicate as to actually say these words out loud...they'll be OUT OF WORK. She prefers, as always, to euphemize and tiptoe around the darkness and suffering involved in what she's selling, because -- and this is what really gets her going -- there will be so many happy spiritual effects of all that poverty and joblessness. And Peggy's all about the spiritual renewal, y'know. Elian was saved by the dolphins (who inexplicably failed to save his Mom) to demonstrate the superiority of the American Way of Life and Renew Our National Purpose. Or something.

Seriously, though, it is so typical of her to be determined to see the silver lining, the holy messages, the New Jerusalem in everything, including (or perhaps especially) Republican-generated disasters and controversies.

And then, of course, there's the fact that she is so often wrong. Observe:

The past quarter century we've had other diversions, often expensive ones—movies, DVDs, Xboxes. Books will fit the quieter future.

Does she really think that angry, distressed people will somehow, for some reason that has been tragically unknown to Borders and Barnes&Noble for a couple of decades, prefer to turn to books rather than play video games or watch movies? Will poverty and fear for the future make people better readers, more willing to pick up a book rather than the remote? Please.

Sure, she's absolutely right that books are QUIETER than X-Box escapism, but that will only make the sobs from the next room harder to ignore.

Twit.

And another thing that only struck me as I was posting this: Peggy considers an Amazon Kindle (~$370.00 -- when they're in stock) "relatively inexpensive"? 

Welcome to how the other 10 percent lives.