Glenn Greenwald: Peggy Noonan is a serious "grown-up"

Glenn Greenwald
Friday December 28, 2007 06:02 EST
Peggy Noonan is a serious "grown-up"

(updated below)

In her Wall St. Journal column today, Peggy Noonan offers up a Santa-like checklist of which presidential candidates are "reasonable" and which ones aren't. In describing the attributes that Americans want in a President, she says: "I claim here to speak for thousands, millions." On behalf of the throngs for whom she fantasizes she speaks, Noonan proclaims: "We are grown-ups . . . We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."

This grown-up then proceeds to pronounce that Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson and Duncan Hunter are all "reasonable" -- as are Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Obama (though too young and inexperienced to be President) -- but this is what she says about John Edwards:

John Edwards is not reasonable. . . . .e can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't.

So Peggy Noonan is a "grown-up." She goes on ABC News and MSNBC and writes for the Wall St. Journal in order to opine and is widely respected by our media elite as a mature political commentator. She knows that "the next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days." America therefore needs a President with "knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world."

John Edwards, however, is disqualified, because four years ago, he was caught red-handed brushing his hair before a television appearance -- "poofing," in Noonan's words, which isn't really a word at all, but rather, a British epithet for a male homosexual -- "Slang: Disparaging and Offensive" -- a synonym for "faggot." Noonan is making the same point Ann Coulter made: Edwards can't possibly be President because he's a faggot. And to make her "grown-up" case for this, she cites one of our national media's most talked-about political stories of both 2004 and again in 2007: Edwards' brushing of his hair.

What a stupid and vapid woman this is, but respected and admired by our media class because she fits right in with them -- endlessly impressed by her own sophistication, maturity and insight while drooling out platitudes one never hears except in seventh-grade cafeterias and on our political talk shows. As always, this isn't worth noting because the adolescent stupidity on display here is unique to Noonan, but precisely because it isn't. This is how our national elections are decided: by people like her, spewing things like this.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/28/noonan/

Man o Man does Edwards scare the bejeeesus out of the DC crowd

zackly

I hear "Peggy Noonan," I think of her description of Ronald Reagan:

"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."

>_0

0_o *twitch*

"You have a purty mouth."

Unfortunately, it's even worse: our national elections are decided by voters who have a high "spewability factor™"; they would sooner be swayed by non-substantive garbage than actual issues.

Thanks for the article. I'm going to read more of his stuff.

The only thing more disgusting than the right-wing propaganda machine is a person so stupid to believe it.

She would never want Edwards as he would undue all the damage that her little devil "Reagan" caused.