Wonkette
Oh, it’s “Peggy Day,” meaning Friday, the blessed weekly occurrence of Peggy Noonan’s myriad declarations on the sepia-toned pages of the Wall Street Journal. Your morning editor took a whack at this earlier today, and gave up — “I am not old enuff to understand Peggy Noonan’s cultural references,” she said, lazily. Your afternoon editor also abstained. “You should write about Peggy Noonan,” he whines. “I can’t handle her. I don’t have any speed.” Oh what’s the matter little diaper babies? Did Peggy’s terrifying schizophrenia blow your little pussy minds?
There are four (4) themes, one (1) meme and one (1) defiant/crazy conclusion in Noonan’s latest chapter of her upcoming best-seller, “What I Saw At The Sanitarium.” The themes are, a) My Brave Battles With Known Reality On Our Planet, b) The Evils of Eloquence, c) Dumb and Vulgar American Lowlifes Have Ruined Everything I Ever Cared About, and d) The Only People Who Would Believe A and B Will Be Outraged by C and D.
Then, for a fun ending, she flirtatiously dares the cops to seize her, bodily, tonight.
Theme One combines two patently, obviously false premises:
I can well imagine hearing, the day after Election Day, a lot of “You won’t believe it but I was literally in line at the polling station when I decided.”
and,
John McCain won the debate, and he did it by making the case more effectively than he has in the past that Barack Obama will raise taxes, when “now, of all times in America, we need to cut people’s taxes.”
The only way her first bit could possibly be true is if she wakes on November 5 in a mental hospital, and the “line” is the one feeding sedatives to her bloodstream from a clear plastic bag hanging from a chrome IV trolley, and she’s hearing “a lot” of this because she’s screaming it over and over again, to a bemused nurse from Harlem.
As for the second Declaration, McCain died during that excruciating debate and was replaced with a leering hell monster during one of Obama’s long answers. The only metric by which McCain “won” that debate was on the level of “instilling dread and horror.” And crankily repeating an obviously untrue talking point — “Colored will raise everybody’s taxes, HEHGHNGH HEHENGHG!” — is not winning anything, it is losing in a particularly stupid and graceless manner.
But, Ms. Noonan must feed her readers a bit of pre-digested “red meat,” lest the clods at Free Republic and The Corner start calling for her simultaneous rape and decapitation and a wingnut time-travel journey to murder her mother before Peggy is conceived. After all, this is what the Modern Conservative Movement has done to basically every public intellectual or common newspaper/website hack who previously leaned Republican — this is because the Modern Conservative Movement is nothing but a fat mob of actual retarded people who stopped learning words once they got to “Nigger.”
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because Peggy still needs to make Crazy Point B, which is the utterly insincere/absurd GOP talking point that Barack Obama, this mud African from the apes, is so crazy smart that he will someone trick the crackers into voting for him, because of his Eloquence, because you know how impressed the bitters are by intellect and verbal dexterity.
[McCain] also scored Mr. Obama on his eloquence, using it against him more effectively than Hillary Clinton ever did. When she said he was “just words,” it sounded like a bitter complaint. Mr. McCain made it a charge: Young man, you attempt to obscure truth with the mellifluous power of your words.
So, uh, McCain lustily prosecuted his opponent for, uh, speaking well at a verbal debate. And then, heh heh, McCain translates his honking gibberish, in his mind’s eye, back to the Waughian ripostes which occupy his inner dialogue. (THIS IS WHERE PEGGY’S ACID KICKED IN. Hang on to the desk, old gal, it’s gonna be a long eight hours!)
Having dispatched one cross-eyed paragraph to the wingnut war on Mr. Talks Pretty, Noonan immediately plunges into a new drink and a new theme, one she actually believes: McCain is an inarticulate hypocrite pandering to the worst, dumbest parts of America, and this is all the fault of the idiots, who have somehow seized America’s intellectual life and replaced it with an obese tattoo-covered clown masturbating to a NASCAR race on the TeeVee.
More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G’s. Hardworkin’ families are strainin’ and tryin’a get ahead. It’s not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say “mom and dad”: “our moms and dads who are struggling.” This is Mr. Bush’s former communications adviser Karen Hughes’s contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that’s too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it’s all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?
Now we get to the main course, which is a snarling and funny attack on Sarah Palin. The beloved Noonan trope about how any dipshit nobody can become Ronald Reagan, as long as they’re simple enough and believe urban legends, makes its regular appearance in what is otherwise a calmly considered “No thanks” to the idiot Palin mobs, and the idiot Palin herself.
You have to hold open the possibility of magic. People can come from nowhere, with modest backgrounds and short résumés, and yet be individuals of real gifts, gifts that had previously been unseen, that had been gleaming quietly under a bushel, and are suddenly revealed.
Perhaps Peggy thinks she can steer the weak-minded mouth breathers with this shiny bit of Reagan Glimmer, this phantom Gipper bullshit. She, like her New York martini-sipping liberal christ-fucker Christopher Buckley, naively believes the “Republican Base” dillweeds actually read the columns. Ha! They use two swollen, cheetos-stained fingers to get the Internets on the Home Page, which is Free Republic or Lucianne.com or whatever they heard about on the AM. And then, their lips move slowly as they try to comprehend the day’s jihad, complete as always with the direct link to that empty comment box, and then they excitedly CTRL-V whatever ALL-CAPS bullshit from their AOL forwarded lunacy of the moment, and maybe get fancy with some misspelled freestyle of the “EXAKUTE HIMS” variety, with the John 3:16 verse (in pink Comics Sans) in the sig. Bekky helped set that up on the ‘puter before she was beaten to death in the break room at BIG LOTS!, by her husband, who had just got back from his fourth tour in Iraq, missing his right eye and three ounces of brain.
Anyway, there’s no hiding from Them, Ms. Noonan, not online. But there is joy in intellectual honesty or whatever, right? And it’s not like you’re going to run into these people at Bloomie’s …. So tell us, what do you really think of Sarah Palin?
She doesn’t think aloud. She just … says things.
Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she’s not a big “egghead” but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? “I’m Joe Six-Pack”? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation — “palling around with terrorists.” If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.
That’s a little more long-winded than your first assessment of the Palin pick — “It’s bullshit” — but we pay you (or Murdoch does, anyway) to be long-winded. Hell, you make your readers long-winded. What is this, a thousand-word blog post? Luckily, you have very few readers. Just us elitists, checking our portfolios, perusing the opera reviews in the Weekend Journal, a knowing smile when our Peggy references something from our more elegant past. We remember, too. And we all hate white trash.
Her bold closer? “At any rate, come and get me, copper.”
Palin’s Failin’ [Declarations]
The words. They BURN!
A day without Blingee Pegeen is like a day without sunshine. Yay.
Whew. It looks like someone found some speed. Or maybe a super double caf Starbucks elitist latte.
Dear Peggy,
Ow! Quit it! That hurts!
Sincerely,
User-of-Owl’s Intellect
That’s a long post Ken and I don’t have much patience so I’m get right down to it and just say buttsecks.
It is so lovely to see all your hard work in college analyzing essays has paid off Ken; nice job!
Kev-O-Tron: I second that buttsecks comment!
irisheyes: And they say an English degree is a waste of time.
She must have gone throw a few boxes of apertif glasses throwing them in her fireplace with the snit she was in writing this.
Peggy, you make my nethers itch. Not in a good way.
Maybe the old biddy has finally spilled the applesauce.
Puliter for Layne.
Oh Ken, please filter all of Noonan’s columns for me. The invited copper is, of course, a reference to Trooper Wooten. Her mind works on a whole other level.
The Cold Sea: Er, Pulitzer. I’m drunk.
Jim, this was fantastic, but please, lay off the coke in future.
Oh wait, that was Ken, not Jim? Weird, it had all seething rage I associate with Jim Newell’s writing.
Anyway, imagine if Ken mated with Peggy Noonan. The resulting spawn would make James Joyce look like a hack.
“…come and get me, copper.”
That’s coded sex talk intended for her secret boyfriend Eliot Spitzer.
I love Ken, and I love how he writes, but I don’t have the energy to read that much about P.N. It’s the subject, not the writer, sorry man.
Well, now I know what I’m doing this weekend: buying two bottles of homemade absinthe and renting “Brazil”…
In a semi-related note, if you Google Lucianne.com, you get the “This site may harm your computer” warning. Truer words have never been spoken.
wait, 3 themes and 1 meme? or 4 themes? wasn’t i promised a meme? where’s the meme? i’m trying to keep the crazy straight and yet the lines keep wiggling all over the screen. makes wish *I* had a tab of blotter, but that G&T getting sweaty on the kitchen counter will have to do.
Peg-ster, honey, you really think that the kids of this Cheeto-stained country “look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound”? I thought I just imagined that run-in with some youngins’ practicing the perfect Connecticut patois to go along with their Lieberman masks at the Halloween store.
I hate to say it but I’m pretty sure the only ‘modeling’ going on between kids and politicians goes in the opposite direction - and involves Congressional Pages!
“She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber” … WTF??? Are you fucking KIDDING me? I practically choked on my Fried Snickers over that…
Crow T. Robot: In other words, it’s not pee-yew, it’s meme.
Holy shit that’s a lot of words, Ken.
I’m glad you read that whole thing, Ken, because I certainly wasn’t going to. It lured me in as though Noonan was going to stick to one theme early on, and then got lost in a swirling vortex of irrelevant analysis and Aurelian whiny pondering tinged with Noonan’s Own Faux Woman-of-the-People dressing that I figured she had just thrown random paragraphs from earlier failed essays and put her name at the bottom. And actually, I think I was right.
Thank em’s for the fine explainin. Book learnin is hard and now I don’t have to try and read me nothin and can sit in front of the talky box and masticate to this pretty blond twink on what must be porn show cuz it’s called Hardball.
“Free Republic or Lucianne.com”
Drudgereport too.
“Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made”
What’s the difference? They both lie their asses off.
Thanks for the Reader’s Digest version. You deserve a day off after wading through that mess.. Cheers!
I am stunned that PN implied agreement with WALNUTS! criticizing anybody for…eloquence? PEGGY NOONAN!??! …head…hurts… Also, ‘mellifluous’? Please.
But anyway, to summarize the summary of the summary, her article is a long diatribe on McCain’s choice of Palin as VP candidate, extending the ‘bullshit’ word to ENOOORMOOOOUUUUUS length. And then she ‘gives the fig’ to the haters-of-the-Spawn-of-Buckley who reamed him and other anti-Palin conservatives.
Seriously, what’s her martini recipe? Ethanol and what else? At least Barry’s eloquence can be understood.
She should be getting a nice bit of email by now. I’d hate to be her mail server.
Crow T. Robot: Agreed. In fact, Noonan (Icelandic for “no one) is such a non-entity here in the heartland (OK, it’s New York City) that I think it’s time Wonkette encourage a total defenestration of this oxygen thief. INHO.
Joe the Plumber meet Levi Johnston, Levi meet your future.
“Bekky helped set that up on the ‘puter before she was beaten to death in the break room at BIG LOTS!, by her husband, who had just got back from his fourth tour in Iraq, missing his right eye and three ounces of brain.”
I did a spit-take at a bar in the Detroit airport when I read that.
Priceless.
I don’t have enough speed to read that whole thing…
Peggy Fridays are the highpoint of my week. Did you know she saw a Mexican once? http://wonkette.com/275831/peggy-noonan-saw-a-mexican
She pours the last of her gin into the Waterford glass. Mascara running down her cheek, lipstick all over her face, she tosses it back, then angrily hurls the glass at the 4×8 portrait of Ronald Reagan over the hearth. “Come and get me, copper,” she leers, and crashes face first onto the coffee table.
Too many commas. It’d be better if she wrote using only exclamation marks and tildes.
“In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. . . . a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine.”
Her fussy, mannered commas got on my nerves. I say they, actually, got on my nerves and I found them, really, annoying. Is this WSJ house style or is it meant to ridicule Palin’s tropes or what? I got distracted by that.
Ken writes purty.
Purty angry! Grrrrrrr….
Anyway, thanks for being old, Ken. Pure bile, untempered by the wisdom of age is a fine thing; but that’s what Jim’s for, after all.
I kinda wish she’d kicked Karen Hughes a few more times. If it weren’t for Harriet Miers, Brownie, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Gonzo, she really would have stood out as an insufferable flake.
CankleBiter: So is it buttsecks with Peggy, Sarah, John or the white trash?
I wanna know whether to bring a Chardonnay or MD 20/20…
My most trusted source is
http://www.newsmax.com/
It’s kind of like a window where you secretly watch that crazy neighbor, and you know he’s gonna snap at some point, and you have to be ready…and armed.
Well, I thought this was class.
“the Modern Conservative Movement is nothing but a fat mob of actual retarded people who stopped learning words once they got to “Nigger.”
Perhaps a wee bit harsh, since the buggers have found so many synonyms for that word this summer (”untrustworthy” for instance. “Unready”, the list goes on…).
It’s like Noonan has the brain and attention span of a kitten.
Here’s a “declaration” of my own. That jumbled, rudderless thought-scramble of hers wouldn’t have even passed muster in my high school composition class.
I like how Lucianne.com is currently listed as malicious by google.
Irony? I think not!
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.lucianne.com/
I have evidence that Peggy-O had a 3some with Ronnie and Babs.
Ken, to quote the adorable Robin Zander, “I want YOU to want ME.”
See, Peggy caught the senile from Ron, which is why she pushed Nancy down the other day and broke her hip
That was my favorite column by the Pegster ever. Don’t be hatin’.
I am so confused!! President Bush said we are safer from terrorists now then we were.Why isn’t the Homeland security doing it’s job? Where’s the C.I.A. ? Why is The Secret Service protecting Mr Obama? o.k. just one more question. IF HOPEY IS TERRORIST why isn’t he locked up?
Obama/Biden 08
“They use two swollen, cheetos-stained fingers to get the Internets on the Home Page, which is Free Republic or Lucianne.com or whatever they heard about on the AM. And then, their lips move slowly as they try to comprehend the day’s jihad, complete as always with the direct link to that empty comment box, and then they excitedly CTRL-V whatever ALL-CAPS bullshit from their AOL forwarded lunacy of the moment, and maybe get fancy with some misspelled freestyle of the “EXAKUTE HIMS” variety, with the John 3:16 verse (in pink Comics Sans) in the sig. Bekky helped set that up on the ‘puter before she was beaten to death in the break room at BIG LOTS!, by her husband, who had just got back from his fourth tour in Iraq, missing his right eye and three ounces of brain.”
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read, anywhere. God bless us every one.
Um… so like many Wonketeers, I’m a little drunk. However, isn’t it obvious that it’s a ploy of the right for people like Our Noonan to talk about Palin like Sarah doesn’t understand what’s going on? It’s just cynical. That’s it. Playing to fears of idiots and intellectuals alike is kind of brilliant. Hopefully, my headache and hangover will go away on November 6th (adding a day to soak in the concept).
This is the best fucking post I’ve ever read anywhere.
Only time I changed channel on the Daily Show was when I seen her on it.
Wow. Yeah, you’re right. Republicans are all racist. We’re all cretinous idiots. None of us have any kind of appreciable philosophical underpinnings or logical reasons for supporting our obviously insane policy choices.
Oh, and you’re definitely not a prejudiced knuckle-dragger or a bunch of liberal thugs, unthinkingly following a cult of personality. Your open mindedness is, as always, self evident.
I’m sure you’ll all do great things once Obama’s clinched the Whitehouse. Certainly with your overwhelming mass of erudition, the coming utopia will be breathtaking.
Morons.
Evolver: Glad you finally understand!
this broad needs a pair of Truck Nutz
Evolver: What a delightful twist. I assume in the first three paragraphs you’re speaking in the voice of the intellectual Republican as you imagine him. And then brilliantly with that last word you disdainfully drop that persona and direct your disgust onto that infuriating breed like a senator pissing on his constituents. Morons indeed.
Well expressed, Ken. Thank you for telling me about the Pegsters column so that I don’t have to read it.
I believe that the argument failing to be made here is “The Buttocks”.
“… this is because the Modern Conservative Movement is nothing but a fat mob of actual retarded people who stopped learning words once they got to “Nigger.””
This is the most astute, stinging, and concise characterization of the MCM I could dream for. Thanks!
Queen Peggy, why dost thou torment your most unworthy commoner with thine eloquence. What muse dost cast her favorable spell to cause your gilded thoughts to flow to paper where we, the most unworthy might see it and realize the treat that hast befallen their eyes. In barely over a fortnight shall we greet the dawn which brings with it the promise of days of ecstacy and I’ll bet you might be still be pretty good in the sack Peg….I’ll go put my Reagan mask on….you can make believe you’re a dirty little liberal girl and I’ll let you raise my taxes (wink wink nudge nudge).
Yeah it be Nailin’ Noonan time!
Evolver: You can’t be called Evolver — your people don’t BELIEVE in EVOLUTION, silly!
Iggy Plop: Agreed…where’s our fucking meme?
tiny mexican: Agreed. I pray to the gods of Adderall for more of this genius snark!
PWNED other wonkette editor pussies! Apparently grampaw Ken gets riled when you bail on an assignment. Ken, you’re my hero.
getoffmylawn: said: “What muse dost cast her…”
That’s “doth,” or didst thou forgettest thy Jacobian grammar?
Ken, I read the full article, and you totally nailed it. Noonan’s whole discussion of the debate was just a decoy so she could trash Palin. She totally went after her. At the same time, conservative talk radio folks are using the article to attack Obama. Her statement that Obama’s cool demeanor must mean he’s “hiding something” is their favorite part. Of course, he’s hiding something. He’s hiding the fact that he think’s John McCain is a crazy old man. I think people are ignoring Noonan’s attack on Palin and clinging to her attack on Obama, which is unfortunate.
Evolver: In the queue for C-Span early, today, are ya?
…replaced it with an obese tattoo-covered clown masturbating to a NASCAR race on the TeeVee.
This has got to be one of the most horrifying images ever. Brainbleach, please so I can maybe someday sleep again…
If McCain Only Had His Own Brain
(If I Only Had A Brain, Wizard of Oz)
WilliamBanzai7
He could while away the hours, conferrin’ with his pal Palin
“Gee this innovat’n is a drain”
And his head he’d be scratchin’ while
his thoughts were busy hatchin’
If McCain only had his own brain.
He’d unravel every economic riddle for any individ’le,
In trouble or in pain.
With the thoughts he’d be thinkin’
he could be another Lincoln
If McCain only had his own brain.
Oh, he could tell you why the facts are to be ignored.
He could think of things he’d never thunk before.
And then he’d sit, and think some more.
He would not be just a nothin’ his head all full of neo-con stuffin’
His heart all full of pain.
It would not be dumber and dumber,
He’d be smarter than an unlicensed plumber
If McCain only had his own brain.
williambanzai7.blogspot.com/