I said at the beginning of my post, and you completely ignored the point, the light from the screen provides sufficient illumination to see the characters on the keys easily. I have the current generation 13" Macbook Air and took it into a room as completely devoid of light save from the screen as possible. As I suspected, the screen threw off more than adequate light to see the keys clearly. So again, the backlit keyboard is more novelty than necessity.
And as I said in my post, which you more than likely did not read, you take your eyesight for granted. Try going without it or with a very limited version of it, and you will see how important a backlit keyboard really is. So to YOU, it may be a novelty, but to others, it definitely is an important feature.
BL.