The U.S.: A Nation of Adolescents?

HazZzMat has been goofing off for a coupla days, but we're back with this intriguing snippet from Instapundit:

IN THE MAIL: Diana West's The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. I was going to read it, but I had to go shop for a PlayStation. . . .

Interesting new book from a Washington Times journo who commands respect. Except, of course, for Marxist house organ Publishers Weekly, which advances this predictably snotty observation:

Her examination of the social repercussions of a new youth market would be better grounded within the context of the transformations in postwar American society, but she focuses instead on the negative aspects of these large and complex changes, without reflecting on her underlying assumptions. In her view, the prolonged adolescence of baby boomers has left America open to an insidious Islamization of culture via a misconceived political correctness that can't recognize the dehumanizing ideology of that religion. West, a vocal purveyor of distrust toward Islamic cultures, lays nothing less than the decline of Western civilization on the American counterculture, making her argument compelling only to those already in her corner.

This is, of course, lefty doublespeak, the usual condescending garbage from a reviewer who, no doubt, has never reflected on his/her "underlying assumptions." But hey, that's okay for lefties.

The very notion that one of PW's allegedly objective ideologues is remotely qualified to pronounce West's argument "compelling only to those already in her corner" is laughable. Publishers Weekly (general link, subscription required) is now and has ever been the embodiment of the MSM's leftist literati in-crowd, none of whom would ever seriously examine the validity of informed opinions not based on current Party Doctrine or standard Marxist dogma. Hence, they can only give positive reviews to books that are "compelling only to those already in their corner." Which corner, of course, is where West's perpetually adolescent Boomers permanently reside. Like, totally.