Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

What Anna Quindlen and Jerry Falwell have in common

"Honestly - you shouldn't have" is the title of Anna Quindlen's toxic "The Last Word" column in Newsweek, which reads more like an entry in the "elitist killjoy of the month" contest. Since I'm writing this on a plane, I have no idea whether my kindred spirits have blogged this to death as they did David Brooks' piece condescending to Afghan cinema-goers. This article is cut from the same cloth. It sanctimoniously criticizes the consumerism of U.S. culture and gives the feeling the author is trying desperately to feel better about herself. I have enjoyed other things Quindlen wrote, so I was doubly frustrated to plow through this. Quindlen believes we shop too much. OK, but then she launches in with the self important condescension:

Uncontrollable consumerism is the watch word of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end….Americans spend more time shopping than reading.

There it is, the intellectual swipe. Not only is she inventing "regular and compelling calls for the end of consumerism" (notably her own, I suppose), but she has an important alternative for everyone. Well I like to read, but I'm not so high and mighty I’m going to tell other folks to do so. Especially since their consumerism is what provides income with which I buy books by…people like Anna Quindlen. Well, I'm so pleased to hear Anna's joined her growing chorus of cultural nabobs. She's got interesting company (more on that later).

Put in the context of current events, how depressing was it to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by buying consumer electronics?

NOT AT ALL DEPRESSING!! It was wonderful. It was GREAT! The whole point of ending tyranny is so that you can experience some personal freedom and opportunity. Do what you individually want to do as long as it doesn't involve oppressing each other brutally or blowing up thousands of office workers. Does she not remember that the Taliban had their own version of how people should be spending time? What is so morally inferior about Afghans consuming video media relative to, say, curling up with an Anna Quindlen bestseller? Eeyuck. I suppose in the 1780s she would have called Paul Revere's return to silversmithing "depressing".

The notion that we should show the terrorists who's boss by supporting this shaky shantytown of automatic-pilot consumption is as suspect as bailing out the airline industry, a business that was legendarily inept long before September 11. If the economy is built on persuading people to buy pillow shams (pun intended) or to replace the three-disc CD player with a six-disc version, then it’s the system, not the shopper, that's to blame in the event of a collapse.

The implications of this human-hating logic are so extraordinary I don't know where to start. First, she compares our general economy to the airline industry. She's right that the airline industry sucks up capital and leaves shareholders and employees with little -although it provides jobs. Because it doesn't please consumers. But the US and other free-market economies in general, which provide all these geegaws that Anna hates, have just handed us a century of progress in human welfare unlike any other; this economy has provided increases in the duration and quality of human life that would have seemed unimaginable at its beginning (Boy, I link that article a lot). And the core principle has been markets made up of actors purchasing and selling what they like. Including the awful six-disc CD player.

So apparently, Anna Quindlen thinks we DESERVE a recession for our sinful consumerism. Well, well, that's not going as far as, say, Jerry Falwell and saying we deserved to be incinerated for being unholy, but it is up there on the human-hating meter. I suppose Anna's got some cash tucked away from best-selling novels, so a recession just makes it easier for her to get a cab. For the rest of us recessions SUCK. Does she think we feel better that its "the system that's to blame". Who is the system? It's us! The system pays her salary and improves health and welfare for hundreds of millions of people. Right now, people are getting laid off around me, and its miserable for them. That's what happens in recessions, people lose jobs, break the poverty line, etc. So it may not feel good for Anna to buy a few things to keep that mall employee working, but I am going for it.

Quindlen dilutes her hatred by calling for giving money to charities instead, and then delivers the irrational conclusion:

Especially this year. You know that if those people whose family members died on September 11 could have them back for Christmas, the last thing on their minds would be a sweater or a tie. The truth is, those lost left a bittersweet Christmas gift, an indelible lesson in what really matters. If we spend our Saturdays staggering under the weight of shopping bags, we’re not honoring them, or doing the bad guys one better, no matter how much it may pump up the bottom line. We’re showing that we didn’t learn a thing, that at heart we are a marked-down nation.

In one breath she decries the argument that we are "doing in the terrorists by shopping" and then immediately argues we are "honoring the victims by not shopping." I've never seen someone reverse their logic so fast. As far as giving to charity, where does the money for charity come from, Anna? Where did Ted Turner get $1 billion for the U.N.? How did Bill and Melinda Gates create their foundation? Who are the biggest funders of relief charities? Corporate owners and stockholders. They do it with the money they make from…our rampant consumerism. And they give less when they make less, when people aren't buying. In addition to funding charities, Ms. Quindlen, these corporations provide jobs. I'm all for handouts, but jobs are better. Relief is that lump-sum transfer that her ideological soulmate Paul Krugman hates. Give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish.

Finally, As Bernard Lewis pointed out in his prescient book (yeah, I read AND I just bought a new cool Visor Edge), it is our secularism and our materialism that islamic extremists hate. Why should I "learn" something from their actions and capitulate by withdrawing my buying power, such as it is, from the market?

As I said, its doubly infuriating hearing this sanctimonious claptrap from someone I have enjoyed reading in the past. At least this column gave me enough anger to stay distracted from my new fears about flying today, so thanks for that. But, all in all, Anna, you shouldn't have. Honestly.

Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at November 28, 2001 08:41 PM | Technorati inbound links