Noonan and the Gilded Age

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Peggy Noonan.
If you’re a lowly wage-slave don’t
even try to talk to her.

So there’s this woman. Peggy Noonan. Writes political books and is a political Conservative. Rich. She writes columns for the Wall Street Journal. Recently she wrote an article called "Rich Man, Poor Man" which started out as a promising piece about the "Gilded Age", how the super rich are richer than ever, the gap between the rich and the poor is staggering, and that this age of greed and money has lead to higher instances of social rudeness.

Then it degraded into a tirade about minimum wage workers.

It’s hard to tell if this is just extremely subtle satire about rich fucks looking down on anyone else who isn’t a rich fuck, or if she’s just one of these batshit crazy right-wingers who have gotten so far out there that they actually come full circle and satirize themselves without even realizing it. Seeing as the article continues into some nonsensical pseudo-intellectual rant about cellphones, I’m going to write my article as if it’s the latter and dissect the meat of this piece.

Here’s a moment in the pushiness of the Gilded Age. I walk into a shop on Madison Avenue daydreaming, trying to remember what it was I thought last week I should pick up, what was it . . ."Hi! Let me help you find what you’re looking for!" She is a saleswoman, cracking gum with intensity, about 25 years old, and she has made a beeline to her mark. That would be me. "Mmmm, actually–" "We have summer sweaters on sale. What size are you?!" Her style is aggressive friendliness.

Let’s start off this this little gem, shall we? First off, notice how she is quick to take little traits and quirks of this person and blow them out of proportion. She has to exaggerate the fevor in which the worker was chewing gum, has to liken the young woman to a vulture in her use of language, saying the saleswoman has made her a "mark". Lastly she sees it fit to tell us her estimated guess of the age of this young woman, and act like it’s a negative trait. So this aging rich Conservative really wants to make sure we find this retail worker as annoying as she did, while being ageist at the same time.

First off, she describes herself as walking into the store "daydreaming", and not even remembering what she came in there for (senility or so up her own ass she doesn’t see the world around her, you decide!), and then is shocked and appalled that a salesperson has the gall to do their job and come up to her and ask her if she needs help. She even considers it rude. Hey lady, if someone walks into a store with a dazed expression on their face, I’m gonna have to think the workers will assume they need help finding something.

She claims the saleswoman was "agressive", but seeing as she felt the need to exaggerate the act of gum chewing earlier it may be safe to assume she’s exaggerating their verbal exchange as well. And you know, Madison Avenue? We’re probably talking about a chic, small shop with purses in it that cost more than your car so she really shouldn’t be surprised if the salespeople are a little agressive.

In another shop, as soon as I walk in the door, "How are you today? How can I help you?" Those dread words.

Oh those dread words. People asking to help me? When I walk into a shop? Diligently doing their job? How rude can you get!? You know what, I’d bet 5 bucks if no one greeted her that that would be the subject of how these workers are rude. She acts like it’s such an unbearable chore to say "no thankyou, I’m just browsing".

Or maybe she’d prefer if she walked into a store and someone shouted at her "BUY SOMETHIN’ OR GIT OUT!"

"Oh, I’m sort of just looking." "I like your bag!" "Um, thanks." What they are forcing you to do is engage. If you engage–"Um, thanks"–you have a relationship. If you have a relationship, it’s easier for them to turn you upside down and shake the coins from your pockets. 

How dare store workers force me to engage them. Do they know who I am? The only reason these subhuman creatures are even talking to a golden one such as I is to get my money! Nevermind that one assumes that most people walk into a store at least considering the possibility of purchasing something.

So she gets all worked up at a store worker complimenting her, and claims they do it to establish a "relationship" but doesn’t mention the worker ever talking to her after that. Maybe she’s just pissed off that someone with less than a million dollars in their bank account even dared to speak to her.

It is like this in all the shops I go in now, except for the big stores (Macy’s, Duane Reade drugstore), where they ignore you.

That’s because they’re truly minimum wage workers and don’t want to put up with customers. Especially customers like you, I’ll bet. These are fine examples of lazy workers not doing their jobs. But I guess this is what Noonan wants out of the lower classes?

There are strategies. You can do the full Garbo: "Leave me alone." But they’ll think you’re a shoplifter and watch you. Or the strong lady with boundaries: "Thank you, if I need help I’ll ask." But your reverie is broken. Or the acquiescent person: "Take me under your leadership, oh aggressively friendly salesperson." But this is bowing to the pushiness of the Gilded Age.

Yes because snapping "leave me alone" at a worker isn’t rude in the least, right? Later on she nitpicks the way workers word things, but wording it "if I need help I’ll ask" is the exact kind of precieved rudeness she’s complaining about in others. Then she even kills her own lame attempt at sarcasm with a follow-up of serious business.

Also, "your reverie is broken"? What? Does she just want to flit around stores in a dreamy state without having to stain her experience by engaging the lesser people in any way?

You leave the floor for the street and meet the woman with the clipboard. "Do you have two seconds for the environment?" Again, not a soft question but a challenge. Her question is phrased so that if you don’t stop and hear her spiel, you are admitting you won’t give two seconds for the environment, or two cents for it either. You give the half-smile-nod, shake your head, walk on. She looks at you as if you’re the reason the Earth is going to hell. Do they know they’re being manipulative? If they have a brain they do. Their trainers certainly know. Do they know it’s also why no one quite trusts them? Do they care? Why would they? They’re the manipulators on the street.

To be fair, lady, you’re an old right-wing conservative. We already know you don’t give a shit about the environment. And of course they try to make you feel a little guilty, they’re envrionmentalists, that’s how they roll. Why can’t you just ignore them like everyone else and forget about the encounter five minutes later? You’re the one being rude here with your my-shit-smells-like-baked-goods attitude and all these paranoid little assumptions of yours.

Oh, and this one is my favorite. Bitching about waiters and treating them like shit is a time-honored tradition of the rich and loserly alike:

I’m in a local restaurant with a friend. We sat down 40 seconds ago and are starting to catch up when: "What do you want to drink?" An interruption, but so what? We order, talk, my friend is getting to the punch line of the story when: "We have specials this evening." Not, "Let me know when you’re ready to hear the specials." We stop talking, listen. The waiter stands there, pad in hand. "You ready?" If you ask for a minute, he’ll nod and be back in exactly one minute. "Do you know yet?" Again, this is not a request. One is being told to snap to it. Get ‘em in, get ‘em out. Move ‘em.

Pierre’s here with your fucking
wine and cheese, you gossipy hens,
and he’s trying to give it to you

A busy resturant in New York city wanting to get ‘em in, get ‘em out? NO WAY. I love how she makes it sound like a highly unusual thing to be asked if you’d like to start with some drinks soon after you sit down at a table in a resturant. I myself would call that good service. Look, bitch, if you want to chit-chat with your friend without any sort of interruption whatsoever: don’t go to a resturant. Go to the park. No one will bother you at the park. No retail wage-slaves or waiters who have been on their feet all night making most of their money off tips will bother you there. You may still offend your perfect, privileged eyes by accidently fixing them upon ugly poor people, but no one will bother you.

Your conversations get inerrupted at resturants. Okay? Happens to everyone. You’re there for food. The server is trying to give you food. But first he needs to know what you want, he’s obligated to tell you about the specials because they’re not written in the menu, and most people do like to have a drink while they wait. He can’t just stand there and wait until you higher beings have finished your dumb little conversation about that shop on Madison Avenue with the rude workers who dare to ask if you need help because he has several other tables and hungry customers to attend to. So he has to interrupt your conversation for a few seconds. Deal with it. It’s not like you can’t just get right back to what you were talking about, unless you really are senile.

It’s funny. In a time of recession, you’d think salespeople would be more aggressive, because so much might hinge on the sale–a commission, a job. In a time of relative wealth, you’d think they might be less aggressive. But the opposite seems true.

And this is her conclusion before she begins to ramble about cellphones. The part that most makes me really wish this was satire. Makes me hope it is satire and I’m just making a huge mistake here. Hey lady, you said at the beginning of your own article that "the gap between rich and poor is great, and there is plenty of want".

Is she really this delusional? Does she think people who work in clothing shops or at resturants are well off? That everyone in the country is rich just because she and everyone she associates with are? The gap between rich and poor is widening, it’s so bad that it’s threatening the very existence of the middle class. And still she has the gall to say that these people struggling to make ends meet are being "overly aggressive" because they even approach and speak to her and partake in the general politesse that is expected in these kinds of jobs? All because she thinks this is some "Gilded Age" where everyone is rich and wants for nothing?

To that I must say a resounding: "fuck off". Basically, I think looking down on minimum wage workers in retail, in convenience stores, in resturants, or anything like that is one of the worst displays of bad character imaginable. Anyone so up in themselves to engage in such shitty behavior is likely to be an all-around asshole. So please beware of anyone who displays this nasty trait, and I suggest that Noonan here take a good, long look inside herself, especially while she’s conveniently got her head crammed so far up her ass.

And if this is satire I’ll take all my insults (but not my basic point) back. But I doubt it is :B