Why Peggy Noonan’s recent Wall Street Journal article casts about for a scapegoat to blame for what’s wrong with America and (shocker!) comes upon homosexual singer Adam Lambert.

Something's rotten in America, if you believe Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. All the things that used to be right about the nation have been up-ended. By Adam Lambert.

Yes, that pesky homosexual has breached the tacit cultural compromise that Noonan, Ronald Reagan's former speechwriter, argues has kept the folks in the flyover states from rising up in revolt. Or maybe just revulsion.

At the heart of her argument is a recent poll that finds 55 percent of the public believe the country is on the "wrong track." Despite the fact we're in the worst economy since the Great Depression, Noonan believes this poll result must be about more than the economy.

And while 55 percent is not a figure we should be happy about, it doesn't compare to the 80 percent who thought that in April 2008 under George W. Bush's presidency, and that was before the bottom dropped out of the economy in fall 2008 during the presidential campaign.

To be fair, she admits the economy might have something to do with Americans' recent turn to pessimism:

The economy has always had an impact on the general American mood, and the [NBC-Wall Street Journal] poll offered data to buttress the reader's assumption that economic concerns are driving pessimism.

About 'Other Things'

But let's set that aside, she says, because:

Something tells me this isn't all about money. It's possible, and I can't help but think likely, that the poll is also about other things, and maybe even primarily about other things. ... Various polls [demonstrate] that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture.

Never mind that Noonan doesn't specify what polls discuss those 'other things,' nor does she specify what those polls actually demonstrate. Instead, she opts for the vague worry about the "core and character" of America and its culture. What better springboard for an attack on what she calls "the cultural left" than a non-specific anxiety that has likely been present during every economic downturn?

Indeed, when we abandon what all the data indicates is the greatest proximate cause for Americans' worries, Noonan is left with a wide open field to cast about for whatever convenient straw man she cares to name. This time it's the cultural tyranny imposed on "real" Americans (in Sarah Palin's parlance) by the cultural left in the Big Cities — home, apparently, to all the fake Americans.

'We Don't Care What You Do in New York'

America, Noonan says, has always valued compromise among politics and culture:

One of the compromises we've made in the area of arts and entertainment is captured in the words "We don't care what you do in New York." That was said to me years ago by a social conservative who was explaining that he and his friends don't wish to impose their cultural sensibilities on a city that is uninterested in them, and that the city, in turn, shouldn't impose its cultural sensibilities on them. He was speaking metaphorically; "New York" meant "wherever the cultural left happily lives."

If you want garbage in your house, pay for it, Noonan says. That's what cable is for. But the networks belong to the people. Presumably, because the "whole family is watching," programming should be held to a higher standard, which means no homos — they'll infect the children!

And it's all about the children, isn't it? The Right constantly crows about how endangered children are by the euphemistic "cultural left," but their protection doesn't seem to extend far enough to support funding education to the degree where the United States can produce high school graduates on par with their peers in the rest of the developed world. Indeed, the scientific method is considered by the Right a direct threat to American children's very souls.

No, the real threat to America is embodied by a homosexual singer — Adam Lambert, the runner-up in the most recent American Idol. Noonan presumes that the American Music Awards broadcast has heretofore been nothing but clean family fun. Please. Rock artists are by their nature controversial, always pushing the envelope of acceptable behavior. Any parents of impressionable children who expect different from this show are fooling themselves; they should stick to the award programs on Nickelodeon. Noonan continues:

'Besieged by our Own Culture'

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.

While I'm no fan of Adam Lambert's performance at the AMAs, I think it's a bit much to single him out as the emblem of America's malaise. It's a little too easy to point to the homosexual and say, "Keep it in New York!" And it's also easy to dismiss his attempt to portray his subsequent treatment as victimization but the reality is that there is a double-standard — women (oh, let's just pick Madonna as an example; she's been around for nearly three decades) have been able to get away with similarly shocking behavior, and yet the Republic has remained standing.

But in Obama's America, it is very important for conservatives to be able blame anyone who is not them for what's wrong. Noonan continues:

It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country.

The thing is, Adam Lambert didn't just come out of nowhere to assault the senses of people outside New York. He's popular because — guess what? — a lot of people like him. American Idol isn't just watched by those cultural lefties; in fact, a lot of those folks disdain the show. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not on our televisions but in ourselves.

So Adam Lambert did some coarse things on TV, and that's a sure sign the country is coarser than ever. Never mind that coarse is a bullet point on most rock stars' job descriptions.

Is America Coarser?

But this occasion provides Noonan an opportunity to wonder aloud, like many people past middle age who view the past oh-so-nostalgically, whether we are a less civil populace than we used to be:

I'd like to see a poll on this. Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago? Do we talk more about sensitivity and treat others less sensitively? Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling? Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated? If the latter, what are the implications of this? Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together? Is there less courtesy in America now than when you were a child, or more? Bonus question: Is "Excuse me" a request or a command?

Let's be honest: America has always been a coarse country. We've had occasional spells of apparent politeness (like the 50s and early 60s) that many on the Right portray as The Way Things Used to Be in America but even then our nation roiled underneath that patina of civility with race-, gender- and class-based struggles. When everyone remains in his or her proper place, America is just the best country ever, isn't it?

Whenever America enters an era in which we wonder why we're in decline we tend to cast about for scapegoats. Adam Lambert is merely the latest. Shouldn't we instead focus on what would really put the nation on the right track? Shouldn't we poll for that instead? I suspect we'd find the answers would be things like education, health care, affordable housing, jobs, etc. — all the things obstructionist Republicans are unwilling to pay for. It's always easier to blame the gays.