Concerning a Certain Highjackin'

Let Rio Limbaugh, and all free-lance downdumbees and neo-wombscholars whatsoever, take notice in advance that this is only a figurative or metaphorical highjackin' that Mr. McCloskey uncharitably and impatiently goes on about. We "Reagan Democrats" were of course never a properly highjackable entity to begin with. We had no formal organization at all, let alone anything for hostile takeover artists to take over with glee and malice. If I hadn't been there myself, I might very well now suppose that "Reagan Democrats" was only a slogan of journalists, a phantom.

Thus to reflect is at once to wonder whether I have not been rather unfair myself in supposing, for instance, that the "Velvet Revolution" in the former People's Czechoslovakia consisted of nothing more than M. Václav Havel's impeccable Commencement Day windbaggeries. Perhaps there were more decent and sensible folks than he further down in the Bohemian ranks who cared, and care, about "Velvet Revolution" the way I cared and care about "Reagan Democrats"? If so, I daresay they probably feel about as highjacked as I do. But naturally that must be their story to tell, not mine.

The villain of my own tale is not M. Havel, but Mlle. Piggy Noonan, who does not much resemble M. Havel. The trouble with Miss Piggy is that she has become the alone icon of a "Reagan Democrat," which, to be scrupulously fair, is perhaps more lazy journalism's fault than Piggy's own innate piggishness. Nevertheless there it is is, and here we are: a "Reagan Democrat" in 2007, if ever alluded to at all, is a former New Deal fan who went Miss Piggy's way, the way of total perversion and reversal of one's traditional régime preference, a really lusty apostasy all the way over to militant OnePercenterism and Wall Street Jingoes and the Big Management Party. We donkeys who decided to stick with Democracy when there was no longer a pretty decent and adult St. Ronald over across the aisle to have truck with might as well not exist, compared to the paradigmatic Miss Piggy.

Nobody is all bad, of course, and Miss Piggy undoubtedly tried to mitigate the barbarism of the barbarians she had lewdly and lasciviously defected to, especially at first, when she agitpropized for George XLI about "kinder and gentler" and "a thousand points of light." But then OnePercenterism swallowed her up altogether, and she became a fixed star in the firmament of the Wall Street Jingo op-ed world, where of course she was on as tight a Boy-'n'-Party tether as all the rest of the hired help. (The Rev. Torquemada must admire the consistency and stability of the WSJ opinion pages from down there in the Hot Below! Why couldn't he ever manage to do the same for Castilla and Aragón?)

Rumors have reached us lately that Miss Piggy Noonan has now broken with her Kennebunkport-Crawford Dynasty Little Brother. We're sorry to have to report that the emotion this rather peripheral human event wakes in us is technically called Schadenfreude. Philosophical indifference or Christojudaean Charity™ would become us far better, yet Lady Veritas forbids us not to report that what we really think runs more like "About time! And serves Piggy [exp. del.] right!"

To add to this, admittedly rather spiteful and unworthy fun, the rumors say that Miss Piggy Noonan and her apostasized-to Little Brother have quarreled at last about xenophobia, with Little Brother holdin' by and large the "kinder and gentler" position. We acknowledge, of course, that Miss Piggy Noonan has thereby put herself at odds with her Wall Street Jingo employers, as well as with her new-found ideobuddies of Grant's Old Party. Such a step as that demands courage, and far be it from us to think that courage is not a genuine Pagan Virtue or seek to avoid applauding any exhibition of it!

Nevertheless let the record show fair and square that ""About time! And serves Piggy [exp. del.] right!" was what we thought instantly and, as it were, "instinctively," whereas caveats about Pagan Virtues and 'a that and a' that were only secondary.

At a tertiary level, how comes it that we are so upset about the GOP's and WSJ's Noonan? She has never done us any actual and demonstrable injury, if "actual" means actionable. Fancy trying to persuade a jury that it's some sort of felony for Miss Piggy to "highjack" the "Reagan Democrat Movement" and hog it all to herself! Perry Mason would chop that nonsense to bits in a flash.

Fourth level down: perhaps we might not unreasonably be indignant about a Miss Piggy Noonan the same way we are indignant about Massachusetts motorists? It can't REALLY be the case that they are all secretly in league to exterminate the whole race of pedestrians, ourselves included, yet for practical purposes of self-protection and avoidance it seems sensible to assume what we know to be theoretically or academically false. I think that will do provisionally, given the obvious parallel between Piggy's adopted Little Brother's Big Management Party's Shock-'n'-Awe and the unwitting (?) arrogance of the progressive motorist vis-à-vis the residual pedestrian: pedestrians and Democrats are not yet extinct, and one doesn't quite exactly want to help make make them become extinct, but . . . .

Somethin' like that, maybe.