Peggy Noonan’s article: The Adam Lambert Problem

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Dear Peggy Noonan,

I think you’re a pretty sensible person. As a 20-something political product of the George W. Bush administration, I usually have a knee-jerk reaction to Beltway conservatives simply because none of you spoke up as he radically diverged from Reagan’s conservatism. During the 2008 campaign, I fully expected conservatives to line up behind Sarah Palin even though she embodied a continuation of Bush’s personality politics, and for the most part they did (maybe even while holding their noses a bit).

You didn’t, though, and I respect you for that. Unfortunately, you didn’t have the fortitude to say what you really felt on television, instead inciting scandal by telling the truth only when you believed you were safely disconnected from your microphone. Setting that aside, though, I don’t believe you to be particularly cynical or calculating.

But this article of yours stinks. It’s not just because I have a personal bias, or a fraternal instinct to defend the guy you’re attacking. It stinks because it reflects exactly the moral degradation of the American character that you’re accusing others of. Let’s break it down, shall we?

  • Adam Lambert, in an act of offense and poor taste performed some lewd acts on television, and children were watching
  • The parents of these children are simply exhausted by constantly shielding them from the modern vulgarity of television.
  • Lambert’s “creepy musical act doesn’t matter much”, but he represents a certain type of selfish personality that is infecting the public sphere a la the Salahis and Octomom. They do what they want at the expense of everyone else, just like the financial sector, and it is frankly exhausting the American heart and mind.
  • Given this new, vulgar strain of public persona you assume that we’re degrading culturally, and that the moral fiber of America was softer and stronger 50 years ago than it is today.

Please, correct me if my summary is inaccurate. Allow me to respond:

Perhaps what offends me most about your article is the subtext that Adam is somehow raping our minds. That his lewd acts are creeping into our homes and that we’re powerless to fight back, that we cannot simply turn off the television. He’s some ghastly, sexual monster creeping out of the static in a true life Poltergeist or The Ring. You define this characteristic as a selfish desire to impose upon others and profit from others’ defenselessness. To your credit, Peggy, you accurately assign this personality to the people responsible for the financial crisis as well.

Yet you state at the beginning of your article that this selfishness we see all around us is perhaps more (if not equally) offensive in our entertainment personalities than our political ones, and that’s what I cannot abide. As a parent, which I thankfully am not, I can change the channel, but I can’t flip a switch and change my stock portfolio or turn up the volume on my 401k.

You think that I consider the entertainment media and political sphere equally in my life. That is offensive. My elected officials are robbing my future children, allowing their oceans and air to become toxic sludge, and you think I care MORE that my kid might see a scantily clad woman or a man on television? Peggy, this is the problem. You think that “faux oral sex” is horrifically, irreversibly imprinted upon the fabric of American culture and that that is somehow worse than the financial and environmental destruction of American culture. It’s simply staggering that you, and many conservatives, think like this.

On second thought, I just re-read your article. You kept a straight face while pining for the simpler, happier time of 1960? Fifty years ago, the moral fiber of this country was stronger you say? The Civil Rights Act wouldn’t pass for another 4 years. Women were but a shadow in the work place. Let’s not forget about the shreds in our moral fabric back then. I’m certain those times were more egregious than the present incursions upon your puritan borders.

Do you want to have a discussion about moral and cultural degradation? Why a considerable swath of the American moral fabric believe that healing the sick is not a human right despite their religious texts stating that it is? Or maybe the fact that I can’t convince half this country that torturing someone to death is not what our country is all about? This culture war sideshow you and your ilk have been peddling for years is simply tired. Maybe you’d like to talk about that instead of having one’s world shattered by someone flaunting their sexuality.

This is why Americans don’t think we’re on the right track: our moral compass has simply stopped pointing the way and you are part of the problem. Our moral code isn’t being desecrated by people like Adam; it’s being dissolved by people like you focusing attention on things that simply don’t matter. Talk to me about torture, habeas corpus, the wars in Afghanistan and our involvement in Pakistan. Give me a conservative solution to our banking and healthcare problems and shut up about the TV show you watched last night. Or would you rather me conclude that you simply have nothing useful to talk about because your party’s agenda just ruined the last decade?