Please help me think of insults for Peggy Noonan

hmmm, and here i was thinking that this WAS an alex in nyc thread.

i'll leave the peggy noonan-bashing to him, since she besmirches his profession/industry the way that ann coulter besmirches mine.

(actually that was said by Jimmy Kimmel on some roast show about someone else but still)

Hateful, insipid, patronizing, evil syphillitic succubus who probably annoits herself every morning with antiquated vials of Reagan semen samples.

She doesn't so much engage in debates or agruments so much as speak her rosey little speech and then shake her head, smile and 'tut-tut-tut" her opponents patronizingly when they dare opine in a contrary manner.

I'd like to see her strangled with an American flag, hacked up and fed to a famished school of exceptionally irritated hammerhead sharks.

On September 11th, I wept. That made me a real American, along with all of the other Manhattanites who shared my pain. In June of this year, I wept again as I saw my former fellow Americans lining up to get books signed by New York’s junior Senator, Hillary Clinton. Had they forgotten what we shared, betrayed that bond that I had with them on that terrible day when we all shared in my pain? I wept for them, and more importantly, for me.

http://www.opinionjournalbookstore.com/images/disp/0743250052.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0006GK5GW.01-A1WQRNT5P5WWSJ._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

It was! For the first couple of paragraphs I thought it was real.

http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2004/12/17.html

Go down about half a page to "Deep Thoughts, by Peggy Noonan"

This is a hilarious send up that the author of this blog does about once a week that mashes up a Noonan column with various "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey. I make sure to never miss it.

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

...yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

enjoy (?)

We can just somehow tell.

Who's this "we," kemo-sabe?

We are living in a time of supernatural occurrences. The old pope gives us his suffering as a parting gift, says his final goodbye on Easter Sunday; dies on the vigil of Feast of the Divine Mercy, the day that marks the messages received by the Polish nun, now a saint, who had written that a spark out of Poland would light the world and lead the way to the coming of Christ. The mourning period for the old pope ends on the day that celebrates St. Stanislas, hero of Poland, whose name John Paul had thought about taking when he became pope. We learned this week from a former secretary that John Paul I, the good man who was pope just a month, had told everyone the day he was chosen that he wanted to be called John Paul I. You can't be called "the first" until there is a second, he was told. There will be a second soon, he replied.

st. stanislaus's feast day in poland is may 7th. looks like simple dates won't slow ol' p-nooney when she's mysticizin' and testifyin', as it were.

We are living in a time of supernatural occurrences. The old pope gives us his suffering as a parting gift, says his final goodbye on Easter Sunday; dies on the vigil of Feast of the Divine Mercy, the day that marks the messages received by the Polish nun, now a saint, who had written that a spark out of Poland would light the world and lead the way to the coming of Christ. The mourning period for the old pope ends on the day that celebrates St. Stanislas, hero of Poland, whose name John Paul had thought about taking when he became pope. We learned this week from a former secretary that John Paul I, the good man who was pope just a month, had told everyone the day he was chosen that he wanted to be called John Paul I. You can't be called "the first" until there is a second, he was told. There will be a second soon, he replied.

st. stanislaus's feast day in poland is may 8th. looks like simple dates won't slow ol' p-nooney when she's mysticizin' and testifyin', as it were.

Rock over London, rock on Chicago.

So much for the virtue of humility.

Oh yeah, and all scientists are political hacks:

...Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must–must–the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?

You would think the world’s greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can’t. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized.

All too many of them could be expected to enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view.

And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge...

i dunno whether this is (a) simple lysenkoism, dubya-style; or (b) some sort of sick parody of certain "deconstructive" critiques of science (you woulda thunk that the social text/sokal thing buried that kinda shit over a decade ago!).

Why are so many forgetting it in the particular? Let us be more pointed. Students, stars, media movers, academics: They are always saying they want debate, but they don't. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn't come quickly, they'll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.

And they don't always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner.

[...]

What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace--of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn't had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died...

If this happens, I'll go well out of my way to never spend the coin, but rather melt each one I find into a shiny hammer and use it to strike Peggy Noonan in the kneecaps.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...)

I find it much much easier to be graceful about political disagreements than I do about matters of aesthetics. This kind of bad writing is hard to take

I HATE PEGGY NOONAN WITH A FIRE THAT MAKES HIROSHIMA LOOK LIKE A WEENIE ROAST
Hateful, insipid, patronizing, evil syphillitic succubus who probably annoits herself every morning with antiquated vials of Reagan semen samples.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), January 14th, 2005.

and "kentucky-fried excrement" is a keeper, too!

That's it, Peggy's finally shuffed off Dubya.

And funny the things she says:

'm not referring to what used to be called Bush Derangement Syndrome. That phrase suggested that to passionately dislike the president was to be somewhat unhinged. No one thinks that anymore. I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who'd previously supported him. She said she'd had it. "I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth." I was startled by her vehemence only because she is, as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago: "I took the W off my car today," it said on the subject line. It sounded like a country western song, like a great lament.

Found via John Cole, who helpfully points out that there's no shortage of crazies out there who happily call out Noonan for being a pussy and bailing out on our Commander.

i love the way alex comes through on this thread.

you still out there, alex? thinkin about you dude. but not in a creepy way.

PEGGY NOONAN GET OFF THE AIR

also, I think Peggy Noonan actually wrote this blog
http://thisismycomputerblog.blogspot.com/

LOOK AT THE BANKS! THE BANKS WERE THE ZOMBIES. THIS IS THE MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT. THE BANKS NEED THE MONEY. WHERE ARE THE GROWNUPS?? THE GROWNUPS MAKE THE DECISION. SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE DECISION, TO PUT THE MONEY IN THE BANKS. LOOK!!! A HEART AND A CROSS!!!

I dislike her prose style. It's this mixture of being ponderous and too folksy, like a former writer for The New Yorker who goes slumming by writing for a Christian family magazine.

And her borderline obsession with writing about how stupid Sarah Palin is comes across as petty, born out of jealousy that the Republican party would sooner make a flamboyant anti-intellectual their pres. candidate over someone like, well, Peggy Noonan.

I shouldn't have been such a hater.

But still don't like her style. And I guess that means, according to her, I hate America, right?

a new-fashion nun was the perfect way to describe her.

I bought What I Saw At the Revolution for a buck today -- too much money. The best I can say is that her style is sui generis: the breathlessness of an autograph hound, bits of Didion-esque parody where you don't know exactly what's being parodied, shrewd observation (she's got a good idea for detail), and jus'-folks slummin'.

The passage jaymc quoted years ago made me gasp:

"I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little ...frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads."

Her latest example of poesy.

After a page-long lamentation on the collapse of relations b/w the two political parties:

But for all that, some things transcend. Maleness transcends, the rough, anarchic humor of men in powerful places transcends. The members were held together at least to a degree by a leveling crudity, by the common coin of sexual sameness. At the subcommittee hearings the thick-haired congressman was unrelenting in his questions, but he only half listened to the answers, because as soon as he'd spoken, he'd turned to his esteemed colleague and whisper, hand cupped over his mike, and without any apparent hint of irony, "Third row back, the blonde." New lobbyist from Detroit, an esteemed colleague would say. "Way on the left, the legs." New secretary in Fred's office but I understand they're close.

noonan in 2005, on deep throat and watergate:

What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.

...

Were there heroes of Watergate? Surely many unknown ones, those who did their best to be constructive and not destructive, those who didn't think it was all about their beautiful careers. I'll give you a candidate for great man of the era: Chuck Colson. Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in "Born Again," a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is, and has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren't dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him.

srsly, she must be the single most nauseating writer ever to write about politics. she writes like she thinks she's addressing a kindergarten.

I'll give you a candidate for great man of the era: Chuck Colson. Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in "Born Again," a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is

fuck me

assuming that her crackpot views of causality are correct (particularly that Nixon would've somehow stopped Pol Pot if only those dastardly liberals hadn't popped him over Watergate), it's amazing how morally relativist these right-wing loons get when it comes to defending one of their own.

Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in "Born Again," a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is, and has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren't dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him.

tell that to the vietnamese

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/two_howlers_from_peggy038572.php

Every voter in the country knows we have to get a hold of spending and begin to turn it around. At the same time—really, the same time—we have to get a hold of the tax system and remake it so that at the very least we can remove the sense of agitated grievance that marks our daily economic life, and at most we can encourage growth.

From her Wall Street Journal column

In which Our Lady of the Dolphins writes a Hilary script

The Clintons take the White House. Burst of hope. Hillary has new first-lady role, one that recognizes the importance of women. She is not some Christmas tree ornament in the East Room but a serious policy official in charge or remaking U.S. health care. She will get the poor, the minorities, and the women covered. America says: Whuh? Hearings. Anxious Hill Republicans awed by her, unsure how to play it. It is Pat Moynihan of her own party, in the Senate, who defeats her bill. The Clinton White House forgot not to disrespect the ol’ crocodile.

Defeat, retreat, mascara. Triangulation: Is this good? Does it mean we’ve become what we hated? Or does it mean we’ve become practical? The point is power. Preserve it at all costs. Lincoln bedroom good place to park donors. You have to compromise to win.

Defeat, retreat, mascara

#grocerybag

It took me back to this hymn to Reagan's foot:

I FIRST SAW HIM AS A FOOT, a highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek, perfectly shaped. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe even a little . . . frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from un-smooth roads.

Defeat, retreat, mascara

#grocerybag

DRANK

I think some this of comes under the heading, timing is everything. When the whole issue of privacy and the Patriot Act came up in a very big way about 18 months, two years ago, there was a certain relative sense of calm in which a debate could be launched and become serious. I kind of think right now, there is a heightened sense of danger, the government is reporting more threats. There is ISIS, there is a hotter sense of danger. I think at the end of the day, that will work against those who certainly -- it will work against Rand Paul wanting to get rid of the Patriot Act -- but it may work against certain fixes that frankly I think are needed, but timing is everything.

after this

You'll be shocked to learn Peggy Noonan opposes the removal of confederate statues but thinks pulling down Saddam's statue was "all triumph" pic.twitter.com/uzO3CV85V2

— Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) September 7, 2017

a professor did pretty well

1/x Ms Noonan, all due respect this is getting silly to the point of stupidity. My job is to research, write and teach slavery, the war, and

— aderson francois (@abfrancois) September 7, 2017

oh i thought this was being bumped bc she just won a Pulitzer but it's just morbs embedding tweets lol

Noonan is obvs godawful but i did enjoy this one Trump smackdown:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-woody-allen-without-the-humor-1501193193

peggy noonan calling the removal of confederate statues a shonda hurts and offends me deeply

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQLqDV2WsAAyKfI?format=jpg&name=small

If you are an expert, don’t doubletalk. Play it straight, if you don’t know something admit it, don’t be media-coached within an inch of your life. It would be good if all scientific and medical spokesmen for the pandemic could ask themselves: Do you like the American people? Do you feel a quick broad affection for them when you think of them? A sense of kinship? Or do you see them as unruly imbeciles you have to get in line? Because if the latter, you’re going to show it—in your TV appearances and written materials. People will pick it up, because nothing is more obvious than a lack of affection.

And maybe some of us should regain or adjust our sense of proportion. There’s a bad disease out there that’s settled in. Approaching it with prudent realism is good. Taking precautions is good. But—it’s hard to say this without being misunderstood—some people have gotten neurotic about the virus. They’re fixated, they’ve wound up every fear they have in it. They’re not concerned about heart disease, cancer, the big killers, it’s all Covid. But Covid now is part of life; it’s not life. At a certain point you’ve got to remember what Sean Connery’s character said in David Mamet’s great screenplay of “The Untouchables.” The Canadian Mounties had screwed up the ambush, Eliot Ness’s men didn’t know whether to join in. “Oh what the hell, you gotta die of something,” Connery’s character said. And they charged.

Life has to be lived.

And school this fall is everything. The only truly dreadful decision that could be made is if class doesn’t start throughout the country in September. That would be a generational disaster for kids who by then will have missed more than a year at school, some at vital stages. They will never make up what they were supposed to learn, and kids from disturbed and neglectful homes will never fully recover from what they witnessed or experienced. It’s going to take a lot to turn that around. We can’t even imagine what it will take.

If school does not begin across the country, it will curdle public opinion toward Joe Biden. A president’s base is, actually, the entire country. He’d be better off fearing that.

School…is already starting?

They’re not concerned about heart disease, cancer, the big killers, it’s all Covid.

News flash for Peggy Noonan: covid has been the leading cause of death in the USA during many of the months since March, 2020, making it a "big killer" like cancer or heart disease. Also worth noting, cancer and heart disease are not contagious and cannot be controlled by a simple act of vaccination that tens of millions of Americans refuse to pursue, you stupid fucking twit.