The Peggy Noonan Problem

History has shown us how easy it is to people the media with Chicken Littles. It’s even easier when the economy isn’t in the best shape. In all cases, it’s much harder to articulate what’s next and why it’s important. It usually takes some very smart people to do that because it involves deep, good thinking. More often, we get fear mongering that is both catchy and contagious. Enter: Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal on December 19th, “The Adam Lambert Problem.”

Ostensibly, Noonan’s main point was about the importance of political issues that don’t have to do with the ubiquitous economic crisis that is also quite apt to pepper a conversation. Besides offering little evidence that the American public is, in fact, more worried about social issues than economics ones (she supports it with: “There are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns”), the article has another major flaw. Make no mistake: this is not a story about an angry liberal attacking a perceived conservative newspaper. I would hope anyone reading Mediaite regularly would realize how foolish it is to brand a newspaper based on its op-ed pages. We’re past that tired debate, aren’t we? This is the story of poor journalism.

Noonan’s problem is that she hinges on homophobia. She uses Adam Lambert as an example of everything that’s going wrong with America and its family values.

I don’t mean to make too much of it. In the great scheme of things a creepy musical act doesn’t matter much. But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

Translation from poorly codified indiscretion: Gay people are ruining America. And Ms. Noonan? Saying Adam Lambert felt like he was the victim of bigotry doesn’t refute…um…anything.

Reading Noonan’s article is as unbearable as listening to Carrie Prejean’s infamous pageant response (especially when you read the comments of both). In reviewing both ad nauseum, I can’t ignore disturbing shorthand homophobia. It’s a not-so-subtle way of talking that allows people of like minds to say just about everything except the offensive things they actually want to say. They have an easy circumvention: values. They might even actually convince themselves that values are at stake when the real cause is the fear of change. What’s scarier is that we’ve come to accept the logic that gay people equal bad values. Even as I read Noonan’s article, I disagreed with her pander to the cynic before I disagreed with the way she paints Adam Lambert as antithetical to all that is good. But unlike Noonan, I’ll prove my point: Gay people have values, too.

As I said, though, this is about poor journalism. Good journalism, I think, should rest itself on solid reasoning. Without distrust for the “alternative” lifestyle Adam Lambert now represents, Noonan’s piece comes across as aloof and out of touch. But with it, she rallies the base. Proof? That fact that she didn’t write this article after the Britney and Madonna kiss.

So the question now is, shouldn’t we demand journalism that speaks through ingenuity instead of ignorance?

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.