How "Unreasonable" Is Peggy Noonan?

[marmar]

from AlterNet's PEEK:



How "Unreasonable" Is Peggy Noonan?

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 12:07 PM on December 28, 2007.

Noonan’s looking for a candidate with a “prudent understanding of the world.” I’m looking for a columnist with the same attribute.



The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan argues today that her top characteristic when evaluating presidential candidates is “reasonableness.” The former Reagan speechwriter insists:

We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We’d like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.

At face value, there’s nothing especially troubling about this standard. Noonan is setting the bar fairly low — “not insane” isn’t exactly a compelling campaign pitch — but she’s sketched out a relatively practical model.

That is, until Noonan starts applying her standards to specific candidates. Here’s her take on the former senator from North Carolina:

John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards’s populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.

Noonan had just finished arguing that American voters “are grown-ups,” and then she turns around and takes on John Edwards’ hair, suggesting brushing one’s hair before a TV interview is somehow a disqualifying factor for a presidential candidate. He’s just not “reasonable” enough. Wow.

What’s more, Glenn Greenwald notes that “poofing” isn’t actually a word, “but rather, a British epithet for a male homosexual — ‘Slang: Disparaging and Offensive’ — a synonym for ‘faggot.’”

Noonan’s looking for a candidate with a “prudent understanding of the world.” I’m looking for a columnist with the same attribute. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/71885/

[Gloria]

1. Noonan was nuts when I knew her in high school....a few of us had a

"rebellious" group called the "Reistancer" and she constantly tried to muscle in, even to the point of listing herself as a member under her yearbook picture even when she was not. She also attempted to woo my boyfriend. She was a huge phony then, as now.

[Iris]

3. What I want to know is - didn't she have children to care for when she was Reagen's speechwriter?

[bluedeminredstate]

5. Oh, do tell!

Please give us a bio on Pegs as a teen. Was she as self-important and "serious" as she is now when she appears on the political panels as an expert? Please, if you have time I'd love to hear a little about Pegs before she became so goddamn phoney and acting as though she has the insight to everything if only people would just listen, really listen to her.
If you tell me she was a slutty, test-cheating, gum-snapping, jock-worshipping bimbo with the seriousness of a Paris Hilton it will make my day.
Yeah, it's mean - I know, but this vapid, vacuous witch who makes Laura Bush look like Einstein strikes me a a big fat fake and she's done much harm to good people so I'd like to hear about her formative years.:hi:


:popcorn:

[Gloria]

7. Peggy was very self-important. She was in my mother's Social Studies

class, where she wasn't at the top. I think she had a chip on her shoulder...not a well-to-do family, Irish-Catholic in a very Protestant town.
Peggy seemed to try too hard to be accepted and popular. She hung around our little group, which tended to be anti-jock. I never really warmed to her because she was pretty distant at the same time she was trying to ingratiate herself.

After graduation, she went to Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. in town and worked for the local weekly, the South Bergenite. Then she went into NYC and her big break was working in some capacity on Dan Rather's staff. Apparently she was "discovered" there and went off to become a Reagan speechwriter...she also gave us Bush I's "thousand points of light" crapola.

Another acquaintance of mine was in in contact with here over the years and together we wrote a piece for one of the earliest media sites nicknamed "Media Whores Online or "The Horse" for short. Rumor that was run by some DC Democratic insiders or whoever.

I had it up at my website. The pages are still around, although I no longer have the site active since I changed ISPs. Oh, I googled it and found it! It has her year book picture there and our reflections.....

Enjoy!

http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/peggy.htm

[gratuitous]

2. Peggy of the Magic Dolphins?

I'm not sure I would accept her evaluation of what is "reasonable."

I've thought about it: Nope. Not at all. Now, if she was to decide someone is barking mad, then I'd consider her point of view, because if anyone would know crazy, it's Peggy Noonan.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Peggy is entirely reasonable...

if you happen to have an idiosyncratic vocabulary in which "reasonable" is a synonym for "Nixon-loving, batshit-crazy Republican drooler."

[riverdeep]

6. I'd rather have someone who 'poofs' his hair than-