|
Faithful husband, soccer dad,
basset owner, and former cowboy
Return to TboggHomePage
FELLOW TRAITORS
*The Nether-Count*
100 Monkeys Typing
Ain't No Bad Dude
Alicublog
Americablog
American Leftist
Attytood (Will Bunch)
Bad Attitudes
Balloon Juice
Better Inhale Deeply
Bitch Ph.D
Bloggy
Bob Harris
Brilliant At Breakfast
BusyBusyBusy
Byzantium's Shores
Creek Running North
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dependable Renegade
David Ehrenstein
Democratic Veteran
Dohiyi Mir
Down With Tyranny
Echidne of the Snakes
Edicts of Nancy
Elayne Riggs
Eschaton (Atrios)
Ezra Klein
Failure Is Impossible
Feministe
Feministing
Firedoglake
First Draft
Freewayblogger
The Garance
The Group News Blog
Guano Island
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hammer of the Blogs
Hullabaloo(Digby)
I Am TRex
If I Ran the Zoo
I'm Not One To Blog
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Juan Cole
King of Zembla
Kung Fu Monkey
Lance Mannion
Lawyers Guns and Money
Lean Left
Liberal Oasis
Main & Central
Majikthise
Making Light (Nielsen Hayden)
Mark Kleiman
Martini Revolution
MaxSpeak
MF Blog
MyDD
Needlenose
The Next Hurrah
Nitpicker
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Norbizness
Norwegianity
Oliver Willis
One Good Move
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Political Animal(K.Drum)
The Poorman
Progressive Gold
Right Hand Thief
Rising Hegemon
Roger Ailes
Rude Pundit
Rumproast
Sadly, No
Seeing The Forest
Shakesville
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
SteveAudio
Suburban Guerilla
TalkLeft
The American Street
The Left Coaster
The Road To Surfdom
The Sideshow
The Talking Dog
The Talent Show
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Watson
Whiskeyfire
UggaBugga
Wampum
Wonkette
World O'Crap
TOSS ME
A BONE
Amazon Wish List
SOURCES
MSNBC
CNN
The Washington Post
Media Matters
The New York Times
The Guardian
Yahoo News
Salon
The Raw Story
Common Dreams
Media Transparency
The Nation
Alternet
Joe Conason
Talking Points Memo
THE VAST WASTELAND
Captain Corndog & Friends
Cheerleaders Gone Spazzy
80% True
Corner of Mediocrity and Banality
Village Idiots Central
Darwin's Waiting Room
News for Mouthbreathers
Mailbox
Your e-mail may be reprinted sans name and e-mail address. Think about how stupid you want to appear.
Blogroll Me!
Site Feed
|
Monday, February 03, 2003
Sometimes the answer is right in front of your face.
There is apparently something about tragedy that brings out the logorrhea in Peggy Noonan. So much so, that she has decided to two-time the Wall Streeet Journal with a column in the New York Sun today, fetching trollop that she is.
First...the WSJ. Usually we find Peg making up conversations with imaginary people, reading strangers minds on the street, or channeling dead people. Today, as a rhetorical device, she interviews herself...or one of her selves, we're not sure which one.
What did you think of President Bush's Columbia speech?
It hit the spot, did what needed to be done. The bible references were pure Bush. Only question was why it wasn't given in the Oval Office. I think I am correct in observing that modern presidents shy away from the Oval for addresses. But why? The big desk with the pictures behind is what people expect. That's where presidents talk.
Here's Peggy being coy (wink wink)
Back to the State of the Union. Wasn't it surprising that at a time like this Mr. Bush didn't limit his State of the Union address to the two great issues, Iraq and the economy?
It surprised me when I learned of it, which was the morning of the speech. I was one of the columnists invited to meet with a high government official with intimate knowledge of the president's thinking, as they say, on background. We met in his office, which has no corners. He told us he would be presenting his domestic agenda, a blueprint for the coming year, in his speech. [my emphasis...]
So we now have Michael Kelly, Bob Novak, Cal Thomas, and Peggy Noonan meeting with President Charm Offensive before the speech. That's enough alcoholism, sexual dysfunction, and twisted Catholicism in one room to keep Oprah on the air for an extra month. Then she moves on to this. See how many Bush cliches you can find:
What did you come away from your interview in the office without corners thinking about Mr. Bush, and war?
I came away with a sense that Mr. Bush has grown comfortable and confident in the presidency, in part perhaps due to a silent weighing that was going on inside him. I had the hunch that Mr. Bush, who had succeeded as a Texas governor in part by relying on his gut sense of people, events, meaning, went into the White House wondering if his gut would be up to the job. If it would give him the guidance it had given in Texas, if it was up to the demands of a presidency. Then Sept. 11 came, and he was thrown back onto his inner resources. He had to use his gut to make big quick decisions. The one time he didn't follow his gut--when he didn't return immediately to the White House after the attacks--he made a big mistake. So he went with his gut thereafter, and in the next 12 months he concluded his gut was up to the challenge. And so he is now more comfortable and commanding--because he can use as a primary tool something he really has as opposed to something he needs to develop.
As to the war, Mr. Bush is moving forward with what looks like a great sense of moral security. He is certain he is right that Iraq is a real and present danger to the world. So he doesn't mind taking the hits he takes, accepts the high stakes, feels sure that if we must go to war we will triumph, hearten the world, and win greater safety. He'd love it if Saddam would leave or be removed in a coup, but he doesn't plan on it, because you can't plan on good fortune. He'd welcome it though. He doesn't want war but the fruits of war, the defeat of a dangerous enemy.
So much for her final transference of Daddy love from Ronald Reagan to George Bush. She finally found a guy just like dear old dad. Now lets move on to the Sun column:
And yet…the old national spirit seems a little dented, doesn’t it? As if people have a spooky-wooky sense that we’re in an era of bad fortune.
The New York Times frontpaged yesterday that America has been hit with “Yet More Loss.”
Reporter Todd Purdum spoke of “unsettled feelings,” a “confluence of threatening events,” and “a nation still struggling with the aftermath” of September 11 while pondering “the abiding threat” of another.
The Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page quickly disagreed. Americans are tough as ever, they know how to handle bad moments, snap out of it.
Well, snap out of it is usually good advice. But consider the cavalcade of ill fortune that’s rolled down the national highway since the new century began. The Long Recount in the presidential election, which shook trust in the health of our national voting system and embarrassed us in front of the world. The lingering bitterness of those who supported the loser, who had more votes than the winner. Nine-eleven, the attack on America, falling towers, thousands dead, the Pentagon hit, terrorism fears, Richard Reid, box cutters, anthrax, smallpox vaccines, Saddam, the Mideast, war. Scandal on Wall Street, false profits, insider trading. An unhappy economy. Layoffs. [my emphasis...]
Columbia.
Man. Almost everyone I know is thinking … this is weird.
The "start of the century".....hmmmmmm, what changed then? Could it have anything to do with a certain individual in a room without corners? Nah. That would be too obvious. It must be:
So let’s indulge it. Let’s get spooky. Let’s ask: Is our good fortune abandoning us? Are we under some kind of cloud? Nations, like people, go through bad times — are we officially in a bad time, and how long will it last, and how low will it get? Is God telling us something? Just about half the people of this country are Bible readers, Bible lovers. They think the real news of the day is in the big black book. So do I. They believe God talks to us through that book and through events. So do I. If he’s talking to us now, what is he saying?
And what about the weird, the portentous facts of the Columbia disaster? It carries the first Israeli astronaut, who won admiration for his part in the Israeli assault, 20 years ago, on an Iraqi nuclear reactor. He is the son of Holocaust survivors. The craft he and six Americans are riding breaks up over Texas, the home of the American president who deals every day with the Middle East fallout, and who means to move on Iraq if its leader does not leave. Debris from the breakup falls at first on a little Texas town named … Palestine.
So it must be the person in whose house there are many mansions (none with rounded corners), and who works in mysterious ways. Then she finishes with this:
Things are not worse. They just continue to be bad. I really believe this. Until I consider the past three years. And I think, “Is this spooky or what?” And I wonder, what is God telling us if he is speaking to us through events? I wonder what He wants us to know.
Based on the topics of both columns we have to assume that Peggy wrote these within days of each other. So why can't she make the obvious connection between this:
I was one of the columnists invited to meet with a high government official with intimate knowledge of the president's thinking, as they say, on background. We met in his office, which has no corners. He told us he would be presenting his domestic agenda, a blueprint for the coming year, in his speech.
and this
But consider the cavalcade of ill fortune that’s rolled down the national highway since the new century began. The Long Recount in the presidential election, which shook trust in the health of our national voting system and embarrassed us in front of the world. The lingering bitterness of those who supported the loser, who had more votes than the winner. Nine-eleven, the attack on America, falling towers, thousands dead, the Pentagon hit, terrorism fears, Richard Reid, box cutters, anthrax, smallpox vaccines, Saddam, the Mideast, war. Scandal on Wall Street, false profits, insider trading. An unhappy economy. Layoffs.
Maybe it's just Noonan's Law: Never attribute to the obvious what you can lay off on a mysterious and unclear God.
|
|
