Peggy Noonan Is A Preachy Nightmare
Its bad enough having to read Peggy Noonan’s overblown and condescending editorials in the Wall Street Journal, but watching her affected preachyness and Reagan worship on Meet the Press makes me want to scream whenever I see her on TV. She’s just so much more annoying in person, particularly when you remember her past defenses of Ken Lay, George Bush, Tom Delay, etc., she has absolutely no credibility when measured against someone like historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin who she spoke to this morning like she was a schoolgirl to Noonan’s condescending teacher. I wanted to throw up.
From CampusProgress’s Noonan “Know Your Right Wing Speakers” entry:
It was when she began writing about George W. Bush in 2000 that she really fell in love. She saw Bush as “transparently a good person, a genuine fellow who isn’t hidden or crafty or sneaky or mean, a person of appropriate modesty. …respectful, moderate, commonsensical, courteous …a modest man of faith …[possessing] a sharp and intelligent instinct, an inner shrewdness.” While she didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the future president’s policies, she does (as Jonathon Chait points out) contribute to a culture where politics is about people, not ideas – and where politicians aren’t people who disagree, they are either good guys (Bush, Reagan) or bad guys (Clinton). Unfortunately for the president, he has not lived up to Reagan’s legacy quite as much as Noonan hoped, so now he receives gentle criticism from time to time.
Noonan, a Roman Catholic, opposes reproductive freedom for women on those grounds, but that doesn’t stop her from advocating the death penalty. Noonan also has a tendency to engage in some fun pre-enlightenment sophistry: ignoring empiricism. Noonan confesses from time to time that she is always on the look out for facts that fit her ideas – not, as progressives might, changing our ideas to fit the facts. For example, in a column on gun control, she writes, “it is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.” (They weren’t, by the by).
Twice a week Noonan masks conservatism in a velvet glove, trying to make liberals seem outdated and out-valued. As a writer, her schlock skills are admirable. As a pundit, her ideas are deplorable. If Noonan saw that a president’s rhetoric and private actions are secondary to ideas and accomplishments, perhaps her talents wouldn’t be so woefully wasted.
Similar Posts:
- The Eloquence of Peggy Noonan
- Minx Smackdown Candidates of The Week
- It Pays To Go Out With A Bush Twin
Enjoy this post? Leave a comment below or subscribe to my feed. You also can sign up for email delivery by clicking here.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
Comments
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Peggy Noonan is the sweet face of evil. A Nixon mouth piece, she has aged into the mother of all serpents. She hisses so sweetly all the poison she spews. She is by far the best, if not better, propagandist since Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Barbara Bush and Peggy Noonan have done more to destroy American Democracy than Al-Quaida ever could have dreamed.
Peggy, put down the apple.
Noonan is the template for the authoritarians’ version of a ‘good little woman,’ patronizing, condescending, and 100% hypocritical. She will see only what she wants to see, and say whatever will endear her to the false idols she worships. Chandler’s comment is well taken, Noonan ought to be seen as nothing more than a Nixonian Mouthpiece.
I second the two above comments, and would only add that it’s not worth becoming enraged over pundits like Noonan because she actually presents herself as a media crook, as openly disingenuous, like a number of self-described “conservative” pundits. Until recently, she routinely revealed her patronizing contempt for what she apparently believed was the inadequacy of the “average” American voter. Even among conservative voters, Noonan probably has a very, very limited fan base.