PEGGY NOONAN TRUMPETS BAWDY CONCUPISCENCE TOWARD FELLOW LADYINGTON NANCY PELOSI: Word-writing human Peggington Noonington loveth Ronald Reagan much in today’s edition of her holy word-compilation, “Declarations.” But doth she loveth the visage of Nancington Pelosi the more? “At public events Mrs. Pelosi always tries to look engaged, a pleasant half-smile on her face. This is a courtesy women in their middle years unconsciously give to the world. It is precious and largely unremarked. You see it on the street in small towns.” Yet hath Peggingtonshire ever setteth foot-to-cobblestone in any hamlet smallether than New Amsterdam? [WSJ]

What does this have to do with politics? Everything. “All of my blog posts are political blog posts,” Bob Dylan once said, and this is true. All of the WSJ’s punny wordsmithery is political punny wordsmithery: “Hip-hop luminaries with the cash to keep it real are appalled. Bling aficionados fret that the art of ‘ice’ is being watered down.” NOOOOO! [WSJ]

Friday! Peggy! She has predictions, for you, your dogs, your hair, and especially for your abandoned skyscrapers. Peggy Noonan does not simply sit in her Upper East Side apartment gulping whisky sours while breathlessly watching RedTube clips, her small nervous hands clutching her crucifix, and other things. No! She looks outside, sometimes. She long suspected something was a bit different out there — once, not so many months ago, she ventured out on foot. Things had changed. The bustle was gone, the Mexican was no longer handing out advertisements and then running, in terror, as Peggy Noonan yelled Reagan-esque platitudes and tried to … catch this Mexican. It is hard to catch household slaves. It is a game for the young, really. Peggy remembers when she was young. It was the Seventies. MORE »

Regarding George Will’s anti-blue jeans column of today, the Wall Street Journal had a much funnier “denim sucks” column, by your editor’s actual relative-by-marriage Daniel Akst, three weeks ago. DO NOT CLAIM YOU DON’T READ THE WSJ, GEORGE. Dan’s column is also far less elitist than Bow-tie George’s thing, because instead of Will’s example of regular American activity — playing golf, natch — Akst’s “you don’t need dungarees for that” example is “people who spend most of their waking hours punching keys instead of cows.” And then he goes in for the kill with “It looks bad on almost everyone who isn’t thin, yet has somehow made itself the unofficial uniform of the fattest people in the world.” [Wall Street Journal]

Obese, constipated hell monster Mark Penn has written a new edition of “Microtrends” — no not the book about how to lose a Democratic primary with a Clinton, but the Wall Street Journal column about pornography! IN WHICH HE WRITES: “Running counter to the pack is almost always the key to real success.” Complete pornography! FURTHERMORE: “Most of the microtrends being created by the financial crisis have been about resetting our tolerance for risk.” In other words there are three Microtrends right now: people taking on risk, people taking on no risk, and people just sitting around doing whatever. So granular! But which one gets to be prom queen hmm? MORE »

Thursday, early evening. She turns the key to her Dungeon of Medicines, an isolated pod floating atop the highest vistas of Park Avenue. It is constructed of the finest Metals and can only be reached by rickshaw. Even after all these years, the scent of myrrh lingers. A glass of scotch is poured and she takes to the shelves. Tonight will be a night of barbiturates. Full bottles of Amytal, Nembutal, Seconal, et. al, are downed within seconds. She takes to her camel fur chair — a special model, in that it is an actual camel — and waits whilst supping on a bowl of cough syrup. The hour becomes 10, then 11, then 12. Midnight. A new day. But still, nothing. She is able to walk; this should not be physically possible. Time to bring out the typing machinery. She is struck, sober, hands on the keys, sitting on a camel, poised, wrought, a wordsmith to the death, honest. Peggy Noonan has written her headline: “There’s No Pill for This Kind of Depression.” MORE »

Oh heavens, Madame Peggy Noonan, princess of the Wall Street Journal banking pamphlet, has journeyed outside her loft again: “A moment last Monday, just after noon, in Manhattan. It’s slightly overcast, not cold, a good day for walking. I’m in the 90s on Fifth heading south, enjoying the broad avenue, the trees, the wide cobblestone walkway that rings Central Park. Suddenly I realize: Something’s odd here.” MORE »

In this Wall Street Journal boring article about how Europeans sure love cigarettes yadda yadda, we were intrigued by this paragraph calling Nazi Pope Joe “the Plumber” Ratzinger a known smoker! Is this some hilarious WSJ New Year’s joke? Because there is no evidence we can locate, outside of some obviously photoshopped images of Ratzi in a cloud of cancer, to suggest our crappiest pope indulges in this particular variety of sucking on cylindrical objects. MORE »

As Gawker points out, this comical footnote is the douchiest possible way Mark Penn — or anyone, ever — could have ended his Wall Street Journal column today. (Oh, yes, he has a regular WSJ column now called… “Microtrends.” His punishment from God is to hawk this dumb book for the rest of his life.) [WSJ, Gawker]

One of the Festivus Miracles of American Journalism is that the Wall Street Journal is such a very good newspaper despite the daily presence of its editorial pages, which are run by a couple of brain-damaged wingnuts who would be unwelcome on AM talk radio, as callers. Today, one of these comical editors has typed up a wonderful economic theory about the current global recession which was caused by unmitigated over-leveraging of fanciful mortgage-based securities whose existence was encouraged by artificially cheap and unscrutinized credit and the resulting collapse of those securities’ values and the resulting credit crunch combined with the deeply intertwined decline of the real estate, construction, mortgage, investment and commodity markets, which was the primary and undisputed cause of the halt in consumer spending which has unarguably created a feedback loop of unemployment, debt default, foreclosures and negative economic activity all over the planet Earth: This was all actually caused by somebody not saying “Merry Christmas” at the mall! MORE »

PEGGY NOONAN WRITES HUMDRUM COLUMN THIS SEVEN-DAY!: Can you even believe it? She just has a bunch of modestly valid points jumping all over the place, but nothing about seeing a Mexican or viewing a “rabbity forest creature darting among the hedgerows” on her television machine. Has our Miss Noonington been reading Wonkette’s weekly scholarly criticism of “Declarations” and decided to tone down the neo-Victorianisms? ‘Twoud be a shame! FREE PEGGY NOONAN! [WSJ]