Inappropriate Content: The "Real" West Virginia

In her August 4th column in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan complains about liberal elitists who leave their Manhattan and Georgetown condos to visit the countryside and treat the locals like children. Then she describes her recent visit to West Virginia.

Ms. Noonan has just returned from her first visit to the state, which she keeps describing as “real.” (Apparently her last vacation was a three-night cruise through Fiddler’s Green.) The hills, the small towns, the people: all “real.” West Virginia is perfectly macho, with a town named Artie, a town named Bud, and a county that took the ‘La’ off ‘Lafayette’ because it was “a little lah dee dah.” I’m sure a certain senator from Pennsylvania could appreciate that.

Ms. Noonan’s description doesn’t sound very much like the place I lived, went to school, and worked in for most of last year. That’s because, notwithstanding her fondness for the adjective “real,” Ms. Noonan’s West Virginia is almost a Frank Capra movie, albeit without Jimmy Stewart. She wants West Virginians to be salt of the earth folk, untouched by the elitist liberal Hollywood culture and perfectly happy in their simple, pure lives. She succeeds only in making them look stupid.

West Virginians, according to Ms. Noonan, have a “particular dignity and humility,” which sounds very nice until you read that this particular dignity comes from being “left so alone by history.” West Virginians “aren’t sure why [the New River] is called the New and think Lewis and Clark were surprised to come upon its broad gray power.” Apparently West Virginians don’t realize that the Lewis and Clark expedition took place thousands of miles away, centuries after the New River was named. After all, they’re simple people.

She goes on:

Few people I met seemed interested in politics. I got the impression they see it as something dull and far away, as a normal person would.

And isn’t that just charming? Perhaps Ms. Noonan truly believes that normal people don’t care about politics. Only those poor, not “real” people in Washington—Ms. Noonan, for instance—worry about all those dull, far away things like taxes and wars. “Real” people don’t take an interest.

Ms. Noonan immediately contradicts herself, explaining that West Virginian do, indeed, have politics—and apparently the type of politics Ms. Noonan and the Journal prefer: talking points.

It’s a tall state...with winding roads, except where it’s broad and beige and full of highway, courtesy of Robert Byrd. The highways are perfect looking, unstained by wear and tear, and not many people seem to use them.

Well, I don’t supposed I can begrudge Ms. Noonan a cheap shot at the GOP’s target of choice in 2006 (I’m sure she won’t begrudge the similar shot I made at a certain senator from Pennsylvania). But I would be curious to know how she got around the Mountain State, if it wasn’t on those highways. After all, the only alternatives are mule and helicopter.

There are little churches in every town, where the highest thing is the steeples, and road signs with exhortations to follow Jesus, and big crosses made of white wood on the side of the road. The ACLU would do well not to come here and do their church-state thing.

I’m not sure what surprises Ms. Noonan about this. Surely she can’t think that Washington D.C. doesn’t have churches. Perhaps she’s used to places like National Cathedral, St. Johns Church, and the Adas Israel Synagogue. Maybe she doesn’t think D.C. has any little churches with road signs and wooden crosses. (That would mean she’s never been east of the Anacostia river, of course, but that’s entirely possible of a woman who thinks “West Virginia's people seem to be largely what they were, of Scots-Irish descent, and have remained vividly so.”) Maybe she’s slyly implied that the ACLU’s “thing” is to get rid of churches so often, she’s actually forgotten about National Cathedral, St. Johns, Adas Israel, and the literally hundreds of other congregations in Washington, D.C.

Of course, the ACLU is hard at work at it’s “thing” in West Virginia. Most recently, they helped a Clay County woman regain custody of her daughter after her partner, the girl’s biological mother, was killed in a car crash. Over the past few years, the ACLU has also gotten the ten commandments removed from West Virginia classrooms and stopped a West Virginia judge from conducting prayers in his courtroom, and regardless of how you feel about those cases, Ms. Noonan’s nonsensical claim that the ACLU isn’t in West Virginia demonstrates just how observant she was during her visit to the “real” West Virginia.

Someone else said, approvingly, "Everyone keeps a gun in West Virginia. Crime is low." Later I would be told it has the lowest violent crime per capita in the United States. It is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.

And while crime is low in West Virginia, whoever told her it has the lowest crime per capita hasn’t seen the FBI’s most recent violent crime statistics, which show that in 2003, Howard Dean’s Vermont had less than half the violent crime of West Virginia; that Delaware and Connecticut had fewer murders; that New Jersey had less rape; and that the gun-keeper’s paradise, Texas, had twice the murder rate of West Virginia and three times that of Vermont.

Perhaps I’ve contradicted myself; I’ve said I want to defend West Virginia; yet I’ve told you about it’s high crime rate and vicious politics. Ms. Noonan, too contradicts herself. She tells us that few West Virginians are uninterested in politics; then she tells us what West Virginians think of gun control, the ACLU, and Robert Byrd’s highways. She tells us “the people I was meeting were kind and easygoing, but something tells me you don't want to get them mad;” then she tells us tells the horror story of a mining boss who politely and respectfully disagreed with a local politician, and how the politician eventually admitted that the mining boss had a point. She tells us “particular and distinctive survive, especially in West Virginia;” then she tells us of the crowds of outsiders coming to West Virginia (presumably on those highways she told use no one uses).

Well, life contradicts itself too. The difference is, Ms. Noonan contradicts herself because she wants to describe the “real” West Virginia, which she wants to be a paradise, still free of the evils of liberalism, of the city, of the “lah dee dah.” She wants it to be “like an emerald you dig from the hills with your hands.” I contradict myself because I want to describe the West Virginia I where I worked, studied, had sex (proving there’s more “lah dee dah” around than Ms. Noonan thinks), slept every night, made friends, where I lived.

My West Virginia is far messier and more complicated than Ms. Noonan’s West Virginia; but I’ll take the real world over a childishly simple “real” world any day. Because I don’t like those big-city elitists who leave their Manhattan and Georgetown condos to visit the country and treat the locals like children.