Jim Newell at Gawker alerts us to Reagan-idolator Peggy Noonan’s fears of an internet planet:
In today’s comical jumble of foggy Victorian wrist spasms, “Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness,” Noonan lashes out at Earth’s toddler authority figures and their petty, corrosive effects on discourse. They are incompetent, pre-pubescent. Why do these middle-aged men have no midwives or governesses to monitor them as they sway in the cradle?
__
“Mr. Obama is young, 48, as is British Prime Minister David Cameron (43), with whom he meets next week, and as were Bill Clinton (46 on Inauguration Day) and the somewhat older but still distressingly young George W. Bush, sworn in at 54. Mr. Cameron’s partner in governance, Nicholas Clegg, is also 43. Stephen Harper of Canada is 51, Nicolas Sarkozy of France a youthful 55.
__
Youth is supposed to bring vigor and vision. In general, however, I think we find in our modern political figures that what it really brings is need-for greatness, to be transformative, to leave a legacy. Such clamorous needs! How very boring they are, how puny and small, but how huge in their consequences.”
__
And who enables these petulant 50-year-old rapscallion devils? The bloggers, who are somehow even younger! Look at them, on their “Internet” machines, slamming the typing boards like unmedicated Jacobins.
__
“On the Internet, you read the fierce posts of political and ideological writers and wonder, Why do so many young bloggers sound like hyenas laughing in the dark? Maybe it’s because there’s no old hand at the next desk to turn and say, “Son, being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life.”
At the age of 54, it would be rather thrilling to be dismissed as a mere stripling, except that Peggy Noonan is a Very Serious Person promoting the Very Serious presidential credentials of… a bunch of piggy-eyed Heartland(tm) Republican hacks. I wish Finley Peter Dunne’s work were more widely available online; during America’s first Gilded Age, he wrote a wonderful satire of punditocratic headshaking over the impetuous results-oriented methods of President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt that could be substituted for Noonan’s tut-tutting with a simple updating of the proper nouns.
On the other hand, ‘Trash-Talking Rage Monkeys’ would be a great name for a garage band, eh?
Jules
Damn whippersnappers…get off of Peggy’s lawn already…
General Stuck
Peg like Brooks is about too clever by half. She would never have written such BS in Bush’s first term, or second, at least until Bush cost the repubs the congress in 2006. And like Brooks, where the same applies, she is practicing some familiar big brain guru on Obama. In order to do it with a veneer of credibility, she has to start with sweeping inclusions of also too wingnuts like Bush, who nobody now cares about because he no longer has power. It is not youth Peggy is queasy about, it is about Obama and his competency of getting his liberal policies passed into law. They aren’t left wing radical policies, but they sure aren’t Peggy’s preferred laws. She is let down that even with total obstinance from her winger buds in congress, Obama gets one liberal bill after another passed, and puts one more nail in the Gippers legacy coffin. Her all time Hero.
Mike G
It would bolster Magic Dolphin’s credibility if, between her binges and blackouts, she could dig up any criticism she had written in the past about the callowness of the grossly immature Bush, Dan Quayle or Sarah Palin (42 when she ran for VP). I doubt she, or anyone, would find any; she’d be too busy praising their “freshness” and “vitality”. Or if she would utter a word against a major Repig actually running this year.
It’s just the latest of the rotating attack propaganda strategies aginst Obama.
burnspbesq
Noonan is so bad, she makes Dowd look good by comparison.
Steeplejack
Much as “trash-talking rage monkeys” and “open thread” occurring in the same thread title are like a red flag to a bull to me, I canna sustain the mo’ tonight. I’m crashing hard, for some reason–and much earlier than normal on a weekend eve for me. Mañana. Fight the good fight, even if it is with each other.
jeff
Pshaw! You kids sallying around in your “Class of ’78” tees are just asking for it. In my time nobody listened to anyone under fesxti-ahundred. My Pa may have only been 24 when I was whelped, but, with inflation, that’s closer to 60 (even given the negative inflation rate). Anyway, my Pa never had no truck with. . . . . usw
Kyle
Shorter Peggy:
Heavens to Betsy, the young internet rabble dared use the word “fuck” to describe how we fucked up America.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
I declare this a fallacy. Dowd is her own circle of suckitude extant of Noonan’s. Therefore a comparison cannot be made at this level.
BTW my brother may be starting to end his post- job termination drift and is seriously considering law school. I’m finding myself encouraging this maneuver.
PanAmerican
Zombie media want BRAINS!
FlipYrWhig
After her slobbery mooning over Sts. John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, I think we can picture all too well Peggy’s daydreams about old hands.
Mayken
@FlipYrWhig: Um… ewww! Excuse me while I go get a spoon to dig THAT image out of my brain.
Yutsano
Oh and on-top to this post: what the hell is Joe Biden a spring chicken? And it’s not like Gates isn’t Medicare eligible. But I think Nooners won’t be happy unless you are as decrepit as Krauthammer or Broder. Of course this would explain her irrational love for Walnuts.
Mayken
Also too: “fears of an internet planet” What you did there, I sawed it!
jl
You have to subscribe to the WSJ to read Mistress Peggieux Nooninghampton now?
Too bad. I won’t be able to read the original, unless someone can help me find something free.
Youth usually seems like hyenas laughing in the dark to older people, especially doddering old people who are afraid they might not be able to get out of the way. That may sound mean, but I believe it is true. Poor Dame Noonerinton, peering out from behind the heavy drapes of her penthouse, seeing what mayhem those youngsters are up to. Reminds me of some passage in some Dickens thing I had to read in HS, but not sure which.
But jeez, never thought I would hear someone describe me as a young whipper snapper again. And being around Obama’s vintage, in her book, I’m really wet behind the ears.
Thanks, Nooners!
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
What did your brother ever do to you to cause you to hate him so?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@jl: No you don’t. All you need is the article title and the magic of Teh Google. See here:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Youth+Has+Outlived+Its+Usefulness&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CAMEjsKNCTL6WJJHuzASZtMWiCgAAAKoEBU_Q2Atx&fp=57d9c86769d1bf04
Then click on either of the first two links(Not the news one).
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
On the other hand, ‘Trash-Talking Rage Monkeys’ would be a great name for a garage band, eh?
You could even pump them full of LSD and their column would be more coherent than Nooners.
jl
This is so trite that I shouldn’t do it, but here goes:
Constitutional Convention
JM 39 (same as Jack Benny), AH 35, TJ 47, BF 84, GW 58.
I’ll throw in an obscure important CC nationalist in the AH mode, since the webpage has him: James Wilson 48.
I know TJ was in France at the time, but he was in on the Bill of Rights, so I guess that is why he is included.
Revolution
JM 26. JA 42, TJ 34, AH 22, BF 71, TP 40, GW 45, SA 55.
Only BF was old enough to be trusted with such awesome responsibility, and he was a radical that would shock shock Nooningbridgitonswale, since he would be triggering blogger ethics panels on a weekly basis, and would put today’s internet yoot hyenas laughing in the dark to shame. Make them look like timid thumbsuckers.
jl
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Thankee. But ain’t that stealing? You dang whippersnapper, I oughta show you thing or two, if I were your age I’d belt you good on the fanny. I bet you young punk aint a day over 57. Get off my lawn and quit breaking the law.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: The bastard won’t do the dishes. That alone is revenge worthy. But believe it or not this is all his own head hurricane. It certainly would be a vast improvement over what he’s doing now, which is nothing. I’m really having a hard time arguing against that path. If nothing else he’ll learn a helluva lot, plus he’s not entering into this totally blind.
Ash Can
Poor Peggy isn’t aging well, is she?
jl
@Ash Can: Now that I read the whole thing, uh, thanks, I guess.
What drivel.
Lady Peggilond Nooningshireham was the ditz who couldn’t understand the health care debate because in her day they didn’t worry about all this sickness. That is when I realized that she is from another planet where people are eternal, and never age. They were old and silly from an infinite past, and spent their eternity plunging into nincompated stasis forever. Kind of like Alzheimers, except nothing happens so losing short term memory makes not difference.
I guess Bush Jr was lucky to have Cheney, who was in his sixties but looked like he was in his eighties, and his crazy seemed as eternal as Dowager Nooningheathmoor’s insanity. That is mean since he is sick now, but I am writing important historical analysis and the truth must be told.
Spaghetti Lee
I think there’s a competition in the Village to write the article dealing with a subject that the fewest people actually care about.
Comrade Baron Elmo
Indeed, far from criticizing Bush the Lesser, she slobbered his knob nearly as lovingly as she did the Gipper’s. Do read her gloating post-2004 election piece “So Much to Savor,” and try to hold down your lunch. (Of course, Noonan cast Bush aside like a worn-out brassiere once he became a liability to the conservative brand.)
If Mitt Romney bags the 2012 GOP nomination, how long do you think it will take for Noonan’s wistful longing for the gravitas of maturity to vanish? About as long as her average martini, I’d guess.
Pseudonym
So “youth” (55 and under) are supposed to have (a) a vision for how the future should be different and (b) the energy to translate that into action, but instead they merely (a) envision transforming the future into something greater and (b) want to turn their ideas into historical realities. How quaint (as George Will would dickishly note).
This should be Peggy Noonan’s epitaph.
I’ve never actually heard hyenas laughing in the dark. Does the sound of hyenas laughing vary from day to night? During the nocturnal hours they apparently sound like bloggers, at least according to this old crow tittering in the twilight.
Give McCain a little credit for trying, but Sarah just wouldn’t listen.
Also, a preëmptive FYWP.
Linkmeister
If the old hands at the next desk are as subservient as that nitwit ombudsman at the Post, I’ll pass, thanks.
Mark S.
My god, that was horrible even for Nooners.
And that’s why we had eight years of Reagan. But seriously, that’s what she thinks the Vietnam War was all about? What a fucking dunce.
wengler
Yes, I will sip tea and talk about how awesome it would be to nuke Iran and how torturing people to death is the only way to protect America.
none
I never heard of Finley Peter Dunne but the Internet Archive has a number of his books online:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=finley%20peter%20dunne
I’ll take a look at them.
asiangrrlMN
Wheeeeee! According to Nooners, I am a mere bebe at 39, so there is that. Otherwise, fuck you, bee-yatch!
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Does this mean I get to swaddle you. Uhh, waitaminute…I’m only 37. Dammit according to Nooners I’m a fucking zygote!
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You can swaddle me any time you like, hon! And yeah, you’re not even a gleam in your parents’ eyes yet.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I had to read the piece Anne Laurie linked to in order to gain some context. I need a serious dose of brain bleach now. The funny part is Anne Laurie misses the real money shot there:
It’s like playing count the dog whistles there. Nooners is just DYING to include the adjective “white” in there but realizes that will offend a few sensibilities. Just scream out “N!GGER!!” a few times Peggy. Get it out of your system. You’ll feel better. We’ll still mock you mercilessly, but you will feel more justified as a rich white woman.
Cacti
Nooners is soiling her depends at the idea that the old guard media clique are no longer the gatekeepers of information in the United States.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Holy shit. I can’t believe she sunk that low. Good god. Obama is about as ‘boring’ as you get. Nooners, you either need to lay off the sauce or drink twice as much.
Cacti
Mittens is actually pretty old already.
He’ll be 65 by the time the 2012 primary season kicks off.
goatchowder
Naw, I’m naming my next band “The Unmedicated Jacobins”.
I love that.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: This actually ties into the post of dengre’s below. The racism is no longer a taboo subject after Obama officially ended racism as a force by fiat. So they can feel free to indulge their fantastical memories of when straight white males ruled the world and everything was right with the universe. Of course it never occurs to Nooners that if we went back to her ideal age she wouldn’t even be allowed to be a columnist, she’d be in menopause in a bad marriage stuck in the home. But logical extensions never seemed to be her forté.
@Cacti: I can’t see Peggy dismissing Mitten’s Mormonism just by virtue of his age. Trust me that will be a big factor if/when he comes up for the nomination, and not just for the Republicans. I hate to say it, but there are a ton of Americans who aren’t very comfortable with the Mormon religion. I don’t see honestly how Mitt gets around that hurdle.
asiangrrlMN
@Cacti: Holy shit. I didn’t know he was that old.
@Yutsano: Yup. Ah, the fabled good old days that only exist in Nooners’ pickled mind.
I find it fascinating, if not frustrating, to see the Village continue to get the vapors over salty language but not heinous deeds.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN:
This shall make the recent legal ruling against the FCC even more delicious IMHO. Suddenly the young’uns will hear all kinds of wonderful words they’ve never heard before. The vapors all over the South and Utah will probably be enough to send them all into fits for days. Hey if we time this right we could guarantee a Democratic sweep everywhere.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I forgot about that. Janet Jackson’s nipple is vindicated!
Cacti
I think Peggy will try very hard to dismiss Ken Doll’s Mormonism.
It’s the Joe Sixpack bible belt voter who’s been taught his whole life that Mormons are heretics that will punish him for it.
Cacti
@asiangrrlMN:
I’m guessing he spends pretty “liberally” on the botox and grecian formula.
Yutsano
@Cacti: What? In Constitutional-loving God-fearing real Merica? Unpossible! Oh wait…that already happened didn’t it? Add in the tabagger crazy and Mittens is on a path for a massive collision with political reality. Honestly, his pollsters HAVE to be letting him know how quixotic this is. Then again the man has such a huge ego that he’s most likely dismissing all their concerns and going full speed ahead. Sarah the Nominee here we come!!
EDIT: On second thought, this exact fact could be why he’s not anywhere on Nooner’s radar. I know we can only see excerpts, but why else does sweet lil Peggy jump right to Mitch and skip good ol’ Mittens? She is possibly more aware of the Mormon problem than he is.
asiangrrlMN
@Cacti: Yeah, I guess. Dang. He’s right in Nooners’ wheelhouse, then.
Pseudonym
I think even women “of a certain age” still had options as long as they are also “of a certain class/race/creed.” She’d still be sharing and starting the latest gossip and chatter from the Village’s cocktail parties, just not from the WSJ editorial page.
Is Miss Peggy overdue for her next dose of medication? Face it, the Gipper won’t be making a comeback in the 2012 primaries.
SiubhanDuinne
Google pointed me only to winger sites for Miss Peggy Blanche von Smellingsalts-at-Noon’s column, and I refused to click. But the Gawker piece quotes her litany of wise old men, which includes “Gov. Haley Barbour, an old-style, gray-haired, shrewd-eyed southerner.” For realz. I like to gagged.
Changing topic a bit, and recognizing that I may get flamed for saying something positive about Tom Friedman, but I actually found myself nodding in agreement and approval with his column today in the NY Times, in which he laments CNN’s firing of Octavia Nasr. Not 100% agreement, but a lot more than usual. (Nasr, you will remember, tweeted “Sad to hear of the passing of [Hezbollah leader] Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah” and lost her job as CNN’s senior M.E. editor as a result.) Friedman thinks this was an overreaction (as do I), although he thinks journalists should never express condolences for any of the actors they cover (not sure I fully agree with that).
Of course, Friedman also says “I’ve never met Octavia Nasr or Fadlallah.” Probably because neither of them drove taxis.
Unfortunately, I can link only to the mobile NYT site http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/628760/28?sub=Columnist and I’m not sure what that link will do for people using other devices.* But the column title is “Can We Talk?,” if that helps.
*Oh come on. You know perfectly well what I meant by “other devices.” Get your juvenile minds out of the sewer.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Honestly he could have driven his point more home if he had mentioned that others were canned for similar honest moments (Weigel, Frum, Froomkin, etc) but I think he didn’t want to appear unfocused. It’s not a totally bad effort for Tom, but he still manages to miss the forest for the trees there.
Pseudonym
@Yutsano: I dunno, I think if he can keep the Obama soshulist Chicago-style thug Kenyan Muslim Jew-hating bailout welfare queen gangbankster totalitarian FEMA death camp wurlitzer playing for a couple of years he might be able to play both sides: convince the chamber of commerce that he’s pandering to the useful idiots dressed up for their tea parties, while dropping code words and whistling dog droppings to the mob, casting himself as the infiltrator who can pass as one of the Washington elite but inside thinks health insurance mandates are the devil’s most cruel instruments. It worked for GWB, after all. And while they may not agree on much when it comes to God, I bet they can find a lot of common ground on the question of Satan.
Yutsano
@Pseudonym: His worst enemies will be fellow Republicans here. Mittens has to at least take the scary sheen off his religion (something he failed to do in 2008) in order to woo enough of the evangelical crowd that he’s not a tool of Satan himself. Many Christian sects consider the LDS faith to be a big heresy, and that is a huge hurdle for him to clear. He may have the backing of the big business circuit but it won’t be enough to sell him to the teabaggers. Add into that his flipping on just about everything and the Republican primary voters will have to question him mightily. And have zero doubt: the other Republicans will bring up his Mormon faith early and often.
Quiddity
Noonan is totally manipulative with her false-genteel style. It’s all, “My dear! What a mess you’ve made. Now sit down quietly on the divan and listen to some wise counsel.”
She could just as easily write about how great being young is.
Batocchio
Youth tend to respect their elders more when their elders aren’t drunken, evil boring hacks.
Keith
Sounds like she still has latent daddy issues to work out.
Mark S.
@SiubhanDuinne:
That’s bullshit and Friedman knows it. When Cheney croaks in a year or two, nobody’s gonna get fired if they tweet something nice about him. She got fired because she said something nice about a guy associated with Hezbollah.
That said, the rest of the column is fine. Also fine is Frank Rich’s column on Mel Gibson. Hell, Modo’s piece on the Vatican ain’t bad either. They’re all a lot better than Peggy’s column.
PS I guess you have to register now to read these fine columns. I said I was a homemaker hauling in $250,000 a year in the field of Engineering. Try tailoring ads to that!
Alex S.
Peggy, you’re getting old. And Mitch Daniels, 61, is not young. Well, he’d be young for a pope, but that’s about it.
Malron
Did she really suggest that the problem with political discouse is our inability to listen to bigoted fucks like Haley Barbour? Dame Peggy Noonanton Singh needs to get the Ceti Eels out of her ears.
Pseudonym
@Yutsano: I’m not sure if conservative evangelicals are as concerned with actual theology as with political theology. Wasn’t Nixon a Quaker? Hoover too, apparently, and Ike was a Jehovah’s Witness, so the Right’s heros aren’t all Clinton/Carter-style Southern Baptists.
I don’t have much of an intuitive sense of it, unfortunately, and I haven’t stayed in touch much with the evangelical friends I had back in middle/high school. I remember that when news of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy first got out people were speculating if Sarah would step down or lose support of the evangelical crowd. It was clear to me on the other hand that she’d get even more support; it fit right in with the outlook that “everyone’s a sinner” but you have to “take responsibility” (don’t abort, quit school, get married as a teen), and it’s God’s way of letting people know how important abstinence and chastity is to him. (If she had been black or latina, on the other hand…)
So I guess my point is that I have no clue. It might come down to whether the Republican base sees Obama more as Hitler or more as the Antichrist. If he’s Hitler, it could be useful to have a few apostates and Jews and Communists on your side sucking up the enemy’s ammo supplies. If Obama’s the Antichrist, Romney is just another of the Deceiver’s tricks to entice the weak, lukewarm, and impure.
Pseudonym
@Yutsano: In theory, Sarahgeddon has her own trail of flip-flops (among other ethics-and-clothing-related issues). She was for the Bridge to Nowhere up until it lost its funding. She supported the Bush/Paulson TARP bank bailouts. She claimed to support capping carbon emissions. To her credit, if you want to call it that, she’s been consistent in her support of drilling baby drilling despite the ocean of evidence against her. Other than that, her actual policy proposals seem to consist of saying abortion is bad, Israel is great, America is good too, we should entrust our children’s safety to grizzly bears, and those “Washington elites” and “experts” with their so-called “knowledge” just lack the kind of common-sense small town git ‘er done attitude that let this country send a man to the moon on a spaceship built from Todd’s old snowmobile parts.
SRW1
@Cacti:
Maybe that explains the desperation of his recent WaPo START oped. He realized that he’s running out of time.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mark S. #54:
I thought Frank Rich’s column was terrific. But I’m a big F.R. fan anyhow and almost always find him worthwhile.
Thanks for mentioning MoDo’s column. It hadn’t been put up yet when I was reading the Opinion page, so I went back to have a look. Very fine. She’s really been good, consistently good, in her Catholic Church columns, and it’s such a contrast to her daddy-infused drivel the rest of the time. I’m also going to track down the piece she mentions by Garry Wills in even the liberal New Republic.
Linda Featheringill
And why are we still talking about Peggy?
Brett
@Comrade Baron Elmo:
From yeoman of America to laughing hyenas.
Joey Maloney
In other news, Mickey Kaus’ failed Senate campaign belatedly releases his undergraduate thesis.
arguingwithsignposts
63 comments and no “sometimes you need to just keep walking“? I has a sad.
bkny
and look who our lady of the magic dolphins spends on hours of longing:
Who might benefit from a real, if not consciously felt, longing for the old, tried and true? Not a Facebook jockey twittering from deepest cyberspace. A frank, unshowy Sen. Tom Coburn? Gov. Haley Barbour, an old-style, gray-haired, shrewd-eyed southerner? Maybe [Indiana Gov.] Mitch Daniels, who is, as they say, an old person’s idea of a young man. He has the style of a lovely normal boring person. Boring: that looks so good right now. Old, that looks so fresh, so new.
RSR
wow, Nooners and booman sound a lot alike; here’s a quote from booman about my buddy Brendan of Brendan Calling: “living in an alternative universe of permanent outrage and relentless negativity fostered and fueled by the blogosphere.”
A la Tbogg, Brendan made it the tag line/subtitle for his website.: http://brendancalling.com/
SciVo
I’m just… I don’t know what to say. I can’t get over it. 48 is young? 54 is distressingly young? I know that the elderly tend to have a skewed perspective, but it’s over-the-top to infantilize the over-the-hill.
Apparently, D.C. isn’t just Hollywood for ugly people. It’s also Hollywood for old, cranky people who can’t imagine how forty- and fifty-something whippersnappers (that happen to be heads of state) could possibly manage without armchair quarterbacking by their less-educated, lower-status, less-renowned, and overall less-successful elders (that happen to be media figures). And did I mention that they’re old?
birthmarker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-Dqj4fHmM
I am a poor linker, but here is my attempt to offer the fat drunk and stupid clip from Animal House.
I can’t stand Ms. Noonan’s writing style. It’s florid, in the drunken and redfaced sense of the word.
marcopolo
For everyone’s relaxing Sunday reading, an article about how many rural areas are making the move from paved back to gravel roads due to economic pressures and higher costs for asphalt.
Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement
Yeehaw, back to the future and cracked windshields and all that jazz!
h/t atrios
JGabriel
SciVo:
Bill E Pilgrim
Sometimes you just have to keep wanking.
arguingwithsignposts
You know who else was “young” when he took power, right? Hitler! 44!
JGabriel
Nooners (via top):
Shorter Noonan: We need a Constitutional Amendment that says no one born after Ronald Reagan in 1911 can be president.
Seriously, I think Nooners actually thinks that, subconciously. Her template for president was set by Reagan. Never mind that Reagan, at only 16 days shy of his 70th birthday, was the eldest person to ever be inaugurated as US President – by Peggy’s standards, anyone who isn’t as old as Reagan would be today is just too young.
.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bill E Pilgrim #71:
Such win.
/admire/
JCT
@JGabriel:
Really- you’re right, it is hard to believe. Well, there you have it folks, the brain-pickling effects of alcohol use on display. The worst part of this is that we will be stuck listening to her prattling for a long time– unless of course she has one too many and mistakes the window of her Upper East Side penthouse for the front door.
And I agree with the previous commenter that Peggers is really just grabbing on to some bizarre euphemism (age) because she just really wants to say “black”.
I mean, really, Haley Barbour? He looks and sounds like some escapee from a Tennessee Williams play. Or Elmer Fudd after a few highballs.
cmorenc
@jl
Though Cheney is minor-league compared to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc., he has nonetheless like them, abundantly forfeited any expectations that people feel at all considerate of him due to his being a sick old man in slow terminal decline, most especially for purposes of exploring the truth about how his monsterous sociopathy inflicted enormous harm upon a great many people.
Emma
:Flipyrwhig: Oh.God. Does vomit create short-circuits in laptops?
4jkb4ia
I will just point out that Jane is in her late 40s. I think. Maybe that is “young” from Peggy Noonan’s POV.
Peggy Noonan might think that these people are angry all the time because they feel that their government doesn’t represent them. I would be interested to know if Peggy Noonan has weighed in on the Tea Party at all.
Thanks, Annie Laurie, for the Cyndi Lauper. Brought back happy nostalgia for “Time After Time” and “Radar Love”, its close relative. No, I am not kidding. I also associate “Time After Time” and “Holding Back The Years”(don’t ask) and even have the Simply Red greatest hits CD, so that has to beat something in terms of annoying purists. But Michael Bolton covering “Dock of the Bay” was a horror, never in a world of law and governance to be repeated.
Jager
You kids need to realize that all Peggy is doing is laying the groundwork for raising the retirement age….
4jkb4ia
@Yutsano:
Oh, my! Mitch Daniels was mentioned by a conservative who cares nothing about policy! Very amusing on the heels of yesterday’s Charles Blow column.
4jkb4ia
I think Peggy Noonan will be able to get over Mitt Romney being a Mormon very easily. I think she believes that being a good politician is a question of “values” but you don’t have to be a Christian to have them.
4jkb4ia
Oosthuizen still up by 5 on the third hole. He likes it to be pronounced West-HIGH-zen.
JAHILL10
@Bill E Pilgrim: I think you win the thread. Thanks for the belly laugh.
Chris G.
@Cacti: Gotta say, I will not be unhappy if I look as good as the Mittster when I’m 65. Too much caffeine and alcohol in my life to make that likely, alas…
JAHILL10
As for Nooners, youth being a dog whistle for black aside (and that’s a big aside), I think her real issue is the whole presidential legacy thing. Obama is going to leave a legacy and since no one, in her mind is supposed to have legacy potential post Ray-gun, that just really chaps her butt.
“If only the president weren’t so determined to have a positive effect on the average American’s life. If only he were content to be the first black president and move on. If only he weren’t so damn competent at getting his legislative agenda passed. If only he would stop DOING THINGS in the middle of the biggest crisis this country has faced in generations. If only he would continue to let us conservative stalwarts pretend that Democrats are weak ineffectual dweebs, then life would be just peachy keen, like back in the good ole days.”
maya
But, Peggers, where can we find those Marshall Petains we desperately need? Shall we embark upon a national Bide-a-Wee home head hunter program? Depend hunk-of-the-month contest?
This, of course, is great news for John McCain.
wasabi gasp
Behold the Bloomers at My Ankles
mclaren
Noonan’s senile idol Ronald Reagan was the ultimate trash-talking rage monkey of American politics. Reagan remains the Great Hater, the politician who first spit venom at the hippies and the left with unabashed sadism:
jurassicpork
I just wanted to thank whoever came over from BJ (I can think of at least who did) to surf in to my place and help out. We’re not quite out of the woods with our newest difficulties but we’re doing better than we were Friday. Thanks again.
Zach
Hah; Biden on This Week asked if NAACP right that Tea Party’s racist. Says that there are people attached to it that have said racist stuff; points out slurs hurled at John Lewis.
Queue Breitbart rage!
Zach
@Zach: Err cue
mclaren
As the most rabid rage monkey in American poitics, Reagan’s trash-talking hatred was legendary:
El Cid
@mclaren: Yeah, but she wrote that nice speech when the Challenger shuttle exploded, so it’s all good.
Bella Q
@Pseudonym: You have dishonored crows everywhere by referring to this pickled cow as a crow. Unlike her, crows are intelligent, witty and often charming. Alas, they mostly lack internet access, so I lodge this complaint on their behalf.
Sheila
Far better to have a President with incipient Alzheimer’s like Noonan’s darling Ronald Reagan, who started the country on its steep decline. He obviously had no need for greatness or to leave a lasting positive legacy, since he achieved neither. Now that’s what Noonan wants in a President.
Nellcote
@mclaren:
or the unforgettable “You’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all”. I’ve never forgotten that one. He was a dispicable governor of CA.
BrianM
@Bella Q: You have dishonored cows everywhere by referring to this pickled… uh… um… human as a cow. Unlike her, cows are calm, never WATBs, and believe in solving differences peacefully. (They resolve status disputes by leaning against each other.) Alas, they mostly lack internet access, so I lodge this complaint on their behalf.
asiangrrlMN
@BrianM: You have dishonored humans everywhere by referring to Nooners as a human. Unlike her, humans actually have a sentient pulse and two brain cells to rub together. Alas, they mostly lack internet access–oh, wait. Nebber mind. (Sorry. It had to be taken to its logical conclusion).
TuiMel
La Femme Noonan: Unjustifiable (hence truly obnoxious) condescension personified.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Peggy Noonan is a pundit salmon constantly swimming up the same stream in search of her “Morning in America” spawning ground (with apologies to salmon with or without internet access). But that is the only foolish consistency that is the hobgoblin of her small mind. Everything else is malleable in service of her creepy fealty to Ronald Reagan.
AxelFoley
Heh, only in politics is 40- or 50-somthing considered young. In sports, that’s ancient.
Brachiator
Where’s a good Logan’s Run style death panel when you need it?
goatchowder
@Batocchio: you know, that’s really it, isn’t it?
Respect is something you get from wisdom, experience, skill, and smarts. Being a blowhard douchebag doesn’t get you respect, just because you are an OLD blowhard douchebag.
Old people can be drunk and evil and vain and idiotic just like young people. Most people who have those faults grow out of it by a certain age– that is, if they’re not rich and spoiled and can remain obnoxious indefinitely.
Then again, some youth never seems to succumb to those weaknesses in the first place. Nowadays the younger generation (i.e. Obama, Maddow, Kos, and the younger folks blogging and volunteering) very often seems a lot more sober and serious and community-minded than, say, the self-centered yuppie cross-section of the Boomers represented by Bush and Clinton, which makes up much of the chattering classes these days.
Kilkee
“comical jumble of foggy Victorian wrist spasms” is pure gold.