Tag: Peggy Noonan

This may or may not be really awful

Perhaps the worst lede on a political column you’ll read this week comes from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

He is willowy when people yearn for solid, reed-like where they hope for substantial, a bright older brother when they want Papa, cool where they probably prefer warmth. All of which may or may not hurt Barack Obama in time. Lincoln was rawboned, prone to the blues and freakishly tall, with a new-grown beard that refused to become an assertion and remained, for four years, a mere and constant follicular attempt. And he did OK.

Media Nation is no Peggy Noonan-basher. I often found her insights during the presidential campaign to be valuable. But what you submit to your editor is supposed to be what you write after you’re done clearing your throat.

Obama and the right

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that President Obama’s inaugural address succeeded in separating serious conservatives like David Brooks and Peggy Noonan from right-wing loons like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. It’s not really about getting conservative support so much as it is expanding the field on which he needs to govern.

Peggy Noonan meant what she said

You’ve got to read Peggy Noonan’s take on Sarah Palin and the debate in today’s Wall Street Journal. Last month, Noonan tried to deny the obvious when an open microphone caught her referring to the Palin pick as “political bullshit.” Well, check this out:

I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America — small towns, sound values. “It’s time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency,” Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents “backwoods types,” or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun. I’m not sure the McCain campaign is aware of it — it’s possible they are — but this is subtly divisive.

There’s gold in every paragraph.

Noonan is scheduled to appear on “On Point” on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) at 11 a.m.

Peggy Noonan’s hilarious lie

Read and then listen to Peggy Noonan’s open-mic exchange with Mike Murphy, in which she says the McCain campaign is “over,” and describes the choice of Sarah Palin as “political bullshit.” Then read her lies about what she really meant.

What’s fascinating is that Noonan clearly understands everyone knows she’s lying. So what’s important to her is that she demonstrates her loyalty by lying rather than confessing to the obvious truth.