It’s been said before — quite often here, in fact, by yours truly, who has taken pains to dissect the phenomenon rigorously (conclusion? stuck up, unserious coozes, the lot of ’em!) — but as I’m busy just now learning how to fashion makeshift bombs out of old wireframe glasses, ammonia, compost, and some of my son’s battery-operated Thomas the Train engines, I’ll let Pam Meister hammer home the point one last time:
For a number of weeks now, conservative Beltway insiders Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan, among others, have narrowed their sights not on the Democratic candidate for president, but the Republican candidate’s running mate. Sarah Palin has brought out something in them that rivals the ‘80s sitcom “Full House” when it comes to the shudder factor.
[…]
Parker started her ball rolling with a piece called “The Palin Problem†at the end of September. Since then, nearly all of her weekly columns have touched on Palin in some form or other. Her most recent offering, “Maverick’s Tragic Flaw,†suggests that John McCain didn’t choose Palin for her accomplishments in the executive and energy sectors, temperament, and political promise, but because he was smitten:
As my husband observed early on, McCain the mortal couldn’t mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is “exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief.†This, notes Draper, “seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.â€Â
That’s right: McCain’s testosterone is getting a boost from Palin’s estrogen. Has anyone asked Todd Palin what he thinks about this? Or, being a hick from Alaska, is he just happy that his wife is allowing him to come along for the ride?
Why beautiful, accomplished women like Parker and Noonan would join the MSM pile-on of the beautiful, accomplished woman from Alaska is, on its face, confusing.
But for anyone who knows anything about how DC works, maybe it’s not so confusing after all.
Palin is reviled by Beltway insiders  conservative and liberal alike  because she’s not one of them and has made it clear that she doesn’t want to be. And some conservative insiders, being a minority, may be afraid that if Obama wins they’ll be, according to Charles Krauthammer, “left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.†Rush Limbaugh agrees, saying, “this is about the social structure of Washington.†So they feel the need to establish their bona fides before it’s too late.
Parker’s receiving accolades from liberal media outlets and even scored a guest slot on “The Colbert Report,” the show that hip young people  who had never heard of Parker before this  tune into for their, er, news. And one of my sources, who is very well connected, tells me that Noonan was at first rumored to be looking to write a regular column for the New York Times. Why she’d want to work for a paper that is spiraling further down the economic sinkhole, with stocks that are near junk status, is beyond me. But the rumor has escalated beyond the Times and gone straight to the White House: my same source says now the word is that Noonan may be being courted for the job of press secretary for an Obama administration.
Bread meeting butter?
More like age meeting desperation, botox, and probably a bevy of very good Hollywood plastic surgeons.
Noonan as an Obama press secretary? Why, what a transformation! So very Oprah, Ms Noonan’s growth!
I wonder: do you think she might be able to wrangle a book deal and, later, a lecture tour out of such a stunning, unpremeditated, conscience-driven swerve from Reagan conservative to mouthpiece for the first socialist president of the US?
That was, of course, rhetorical.
Speaking of the elitist charge, Parker’s dumping on Palin isn’t her first attempt to keep the roiling masses in place. Back in 2005, she wrote a column dripping with contempt for bloggers:
Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz, and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation’s inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.
Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby “bloggies†are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi.
Unlike, say, Ms Parker, whose years in the trenches may or may not have included a time or two bobbing for Buckleys.
That this persistently catty trollop would be willing to denigrate as blithering children those who helped bring down Dan Rather, or expose AP photographic fraud, or who daily serve the important function of monitoring media trajectories and narratives, political spin and bias by commission and omission (as well as getting many people who’d given up on the maintream press re-engaged in politics), speaks to a kind of elitism that one generally attributes to social climbers and girdle-clenched debutantes anxious for that first well-bred prep-school lad to tug on a carefully rouged nipple.
After all, where would the “professional pundit class” among which Ms Parker counts herself a shimmering member in fine standing be without the mainstream press?
No need to answer that. Ms Parker knows. She just decided to bracket the obvious and write it off as the cost of getting off a few clever lines.
Concludes Meister:
[…] if we’re looking for contenders for the Most Obsessive-Compulsive award, what about the MSM’s obsession with not only tearing Sarah Palin down but anyone else from the rabble who dares to step out of their assigned spot in society? Joe the Plumber’s life was turned upside down by media snoops who felt it their duty to embarrass him by publishing details about his life that had nothing to do with Barack Obama’s illuminating answer to the question Joe asked. Where is the agonizing about “how to improve its product, police its own members, and better serve its communities,†as Parker describes the MSM, in this instance?
It’s tempting to suggest that Noonan and Parker are envious of a very attractive and younger newcomer to the political scene. That may play a small part. But I truly think the state-school-educated, moose-hunting, Wal-Mart-shopping, folksy woman from Alaska  a place to visit while taking a cruise, but live there?  is an affront to their narrow view of America. Even when she tries to sound like she knows what average people are like, Parker stumbles:
As a self-described spy for Bubba who moves between home in the rural South and inside the Washington Beltway, I get more than an off-the-bus glimpse of the Palin phenomenon. Inside the Beltway, I’ve often felt like Jane Goodall, summoned from the hinterlands to explain the behaviors of the indigenous peoples.
Here’s a hint, Kathleen: describing yourself as Jane Goodall in relation to your southern neighbors’ apes isn’t exactly the best way to win their approval. But you probably aren’t seeking it anyway.
These are the Sneetches with stars, and you and I are among those with “none upon thars.†Palin’s popularity with the commoners means nothing. She’s the one trying to crash their party and they’re going to fight tooth and nail to keep her out.
Will Parker, Noonan, and their like-minded conservative cohorts suddenly change position if McCain wins instead of Obama, as is being breathlessly predicted? Maybe yes, maybe no. But either way, they’ve tipped their hand: supporting a conservative candidate takes a backseat to their own self-interest.
And it has been duly noted.
Yes. Yes it has.
47 Replies to ““Even Female Conservative Pundits Embrace Palin Bashing””
NNNNNNOONAN!
*sigh*
Mark Stein’s “theoretical vs. actual conservatism” article pretty much wiped the floor with these blue state “conservatives” quite well.
Mrs. Palin has several attributes that appeal to me. In addition to our idealogical similarities. Mrs. Noonan and Mrs. Parker……not that I can think of off the top of my head.
Parker, Noonan, Brooks and their ilk remind me of professional performers — singers, actors, dancers and their like — insofar as they are caught in a nasty master/slave relationship. Performers live for the approval of their audience and to this extent, make themselves slaves, dependent in every breath on the applause of their masters. Everything they do as performers is done for the sake of that approval.
And yet, as high achieving artists and particularly to the extent that they are self critical, they know that their audience has little grasp of the difficulty of their respective art. In any given performance, that artist knows for himself where he has failed to meet his standards of greatness or perfection or what-have-you and that his audience will have little if any grasp of such arcana. And oh, the resentment this knowledge will engender. Utter contempt isn’t an unusual outcome, cycling back because it can never be revealed for fear of the loss of that necessary approval.
It was Jeff’s line that put me in mind of this phenomenon:
And where the mainstream press without its mass reader/watcher-ship?
Piss off the media — including “conservative” women like Kathleen Parker and Peggy
NewmanNoonan — make Sarah Palin vice-president.Noonan was a cheesey temperamental addled cooze way before this though. Sad wrinkled up hormonally-deprived has-been touching her naughty bits and praying for some response any response while gazing at her Reagan shrine trying to get that feeling just one more please god please.
Oh happyfeet! You wild boy!
If Obama does win a week from now and governs the way most here expect, Noonan, Parker, et al. will have two options in 2009 — the William Safire route or the David Gergen route. Both supported Bill Clinton in his 1992 election, but while Safire later did a mea cupla and admitted him mistake, Gergen took the opening of Clinton’s flailing after his first few months in office to jump head-first in as a “bi-partisan” adviser, and has never looked back, becoming the No. 1 go-to guy for TV networks and print pundits when they need a Republican to spout Democratic talking points.
This Kathleen Parker is a nobody other than being one more reason to disdain the utterly gay National Review I think.
“Conservative?” In what way?
Sorry, feet, but I really like Goldberg, so I continue to read NRO.
yeah well it would all be different if they winning, wouldnt it?
the “hallmark” of a serious pundit, or pol (for that matter), has long been held to occasionally throw someone from your team under the bus.
Kos and that lot, good little gauleiters all, threw any centrist Dem under the bus until there were no more centrists in the Dem party.
Probably these life long GOP machine types want to hound any and all Bush type people from the upper reaches of the party—“regional,” not terribly clever riffing free form to MSM and appealing to only narrow parts of the base. They want no more current POTUS’, in other words.
I dont see why people don’t acknowledge the obvious: Palin is a controversial and risky choice. Huge with a certain aspect of the base, partisan but not deep policy or executive experience…red meat for everyone on all sides of the trade.
If the swing states with large rural populations like Pa., Oh., or Fla. were trending GOP her pick might have been a great call.
they’re not, so its not.
By ’12, she may be a fast horse, with some seasoning and a deeper track record.
whats with the past tense Mcgruder? Is it Nov 5th already?
Sarah Palin Continues To Be The Most Disliked Candidate Of The 2008 Election…
The maverick independent hockey pitbull lady seems to be good at one thing and one thing only — completely alienating independent voters from supporting the John McCain campaign:
A majority of likely voters in a new Washington Post-ABC News natio…
I subscribed to NRDT just to get a Mark Steyn column every other week. Srsly.
The whole Noonan/Parker mindset makes sense to me when I view it through the prism of high school cliques.
ott–good advice, thx.
Did you here me sigh all the way in Colorado? From Pennsylvania? Damn, boy, that’s some tasty tamale with fava beans and a nice key – ANT – tee.
I continue to be amazed at how many rational, practical conservatives are getting caught up in the whole “Death of Intellectualism” meme that Chris Buckley put forth and that is being constantly supported by the likes of Brooks, Noonan and Parker. Conservatism was supposed to have shed the elitist cloak when Reagan made conservatism both cool and manly. The rise of social/Christian cons, most from decidedly non-intellectual working class roots, gave all hope that the Republican Party embraced the ideals of the blue collar conservative ethos.
Apparently, some didn’t get the memo, including both Bushes.
Here we are stuck in a loopy time warp where the Republican candidate for President is running full speed against his own President and party leader while DC Republicans, who have completely forgotten how Reagan defined conservatives, sniff at Palin like she’s some kind of former house servant who made it big selling Aramark products door to door. I’d like to get these effete, apple wood paneled, brandy sipping faux conservatives into a room and explain in a loud voice how they and the party they purport to represent is in the process of KILLING CONSERVATISM. LIBERTARIANISM AND CLASSICAL LIBERALISM in a flurry of social entitlement and drunken sailor spending; along with fiscal conservatism, limited government and individual liberty.
Right after I had poisoned the lot of them and got to watch them die.
Killing? They haven’t got anywhere near that sort of power, BJTexs. Get a particular set of politicians vote out of office, perhaps well deservedly, through the application of the poor policy recommendations and implementation you rightly cite, yes, that power of mistaken judgment they may have had. But kill firmly established ideas of liberty? I don’t think so.
I’ll tell you something. If I was a woman, any woman of any political stripe, I’d think twice about entering politics.
The glass ceiling is the Senate.
True, sdferr. I should have said trying their damnedest to kill said political principles. the worst part is many of these so called “conservative intellectuals” don’t seem to realize what they are doing. Talk about inheriting the wind…
Principles don’t seem to matter to a growing number of conservatives and/or Republicans, my brother being a great example. Sarah Palin isn’t going to get invited to any of the tony DC cocktail parties so she must be the anti-intellectual boogie person.
It appears they might should spend some time with her before forming such opinions
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-27/sarah-palins-a-brainiac/1/
But honestly just making shit up does seem to pay better.
I think it’s been duly acknowledged. But we’re talking about the ways here in which Parker, Noonan, and others have rejected Palin.
I don’t see why people don’t acknowledge the obvious: that there’s a certain unsavory element to much of the prose aimed at Gov Palin such that, once one is done digesting it, one’s bowels are spastic, and one’s tongue tastes as though it has been shat on by a particular presumptuous hamster.
#12 mcgruder
“A deeper track record”? You mean like Barry’s?
Palin has a record. Baracky doesn’t. Not other than his affinity for redistributing shit. Any concerns about Palin are immaterial next to letting that dirty Chicago socialist get his hands on our government. Peggy Noonan is a pale shadow of a woman set against Palin. Pathetic wench.
spiny norman– The Messiah doesnt need a track record. Everyone else does, apparently.
Jeff G- Well, Im not sure. Putting aside the unpleasantness in your mouth and colonic tract, they think she’s a dumb as wood hick with a heartstring story targeted at wavering red state women and the angry elements of the Christian base (who fairly reliably hate McCain.)
I don’t.
But it doesnt mean they are wrong for noting that lightly tenured governors touting conservative beliefs as their primary credential havent exactly been the ticket to fucking heaven for the GOP recently.
Bah. There’s something else going on here, and I’m astonished that mcgruder, at least, hasn’t acknowledged it.
Press licensing is coming. Oh, they’ll call it something else — “accreditation”, possibly, although they may come up with some other euphemism — but the bottom line is, you’ll need a credential. And an ID, with a number on it. Which you will have to apply for, and satisfy the Board that your fairness and objectivity are above reproach. And which you won’t get if you aren’t a member of the Club.
Noonan and the others are expecting (probably rationally) to be grandfathered in. (Limbaugh? Well, there’s some question…) So they’re all spinning like mad, in the confident knowledge that their behavior over the last few months is going to weigh heavily in the minds of the
inquisitorsexaminers when the subject comes up. Her bosses are even more confident — what do you bet that Press License #1 goes to the New York Times? And for them it’s just in time. Their revenues are going off the cliff, and like any good monopolist in that situation they immediately see the need for Government Regulation.That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be down on them while we have the chance; in fact, shooting them out of hand wouldn’t be overly extreme. But spare a kind thought while you’re getting a good sight picture. Watching people, as Sam Goldwyn is supposed to have put it, selling their birthright for a pot of Message isn’t pretty at all, at all.
Regards,
Ric
ric–thats nuts.
they may be wrong, and i do think they are more wrong than they are right, but the people who bash her are doing it for heartfelt reasons.
she’s a controversial pick and has major risks. Accept it.
If O! wins, he’ll have a 45-60 day honeymoon where he will fart vanilla ice cream and sing notes made of silver.
and then, his ass’t HUD Secy will turn out to be an utter moron, get fired and it will be a trench fight for 4 or 8 years.
no man hated the press more when he left office than Bill Clinton; do you remember when he entered office, he used to hang out with them?
youre a super bright guy, RC, I mean that. But you misstate how the game works.
PS–im on investigative side, I dont cover this crap.
Bah, mcgruder. Any pick represents major risks — whether at the top of the ticket or the bottom. We only have two parties, the “first past the post” system enforces that, and there’s a wide range of opinion out there. Inevitably each party has to accommodate a range, and picking a centrist means both wings get offended, while picking either wing offends the center and the other side.
The only thing that makes Palin “controversial” is that she isn’t, as Jeff reminds us, a Star-bellied Sneetch, one of the fine-haired dogs who run in a pack that looks down on us mere peasants. If there is a majority in this country, Sarah Palin is smack dab in the middle of it. Noonan and her fellows are simply too accustomed to perching on their high crag of omniscience, delivering the Word as thunderbolts from Zeus.
As for the rest of it — guard yourself, guy. When the Pure Press and Investigations Act goes through, you’re gonna need the recommendations to keep your job.
Regards,
Ric
You little bloggers with your ticky-tacky blogs ought to be happy that the professional punditocracy has deigned to note your pathetic attempts at commentary, but don’t you dare try to actually compete!
(The servants’ entrance is over there. And take your chillbilly friend with you.)
#28 Ric Locke:
We only have two parties, the “first past the post†system enforces that…
Thank you for acknowledging that the very system set up in the Constitution ensures (intentional or not) that there are only two major parties. And I say this only to toot my horn because I’ve said the same thing in comparison with a parliamentarian system that assigns seats proportionately.
I’m kind of vain like that.
mcgruder: You really need to explain to me how picking Palin is so more all fired controversial than the Democrats picking a partial term Senator with virtually no political or executive experience and virtually no accomplishments.
Because, I gots to tell ya, the irony … IT BURNS!
ric: Your scenario becomes a real possibility on the first day that the Obama administration joins hands with Nancy Pelosi to introduce The Fairness Doctrine.
I can see accreditation being very plausible. It would start as a voluntary thing. They know how to do this sort of thing. They do it all the time. These are the same one what ended up making those people get incredibly expensive licenses so they can have the honor of setting the clippers at #2 and pawing at my head for ten minutes or so. They have no sense of free agency at all. Because they are dirty socialists Mr. Newspaper Guild person. Dirty disgusting oppressive withered socialists grasping for power. They will do what they do, and they’re a lot focused on their servile media playthings right now. Yay new toys. You’re so screwed.
*same ones*
Hey, that’s a nice license to live your life you’ve got there. Be a shame if you were to lose it.
My impression is that mcgruder works with people who see it that way, and he’s just reporting.
It’s like how Jane Gooddall understands chimpanzees — not because she is one or wants to be one, but because she has observed them for years.
When Republicans are in office, the media see themselves as the Shadow Information Ministry, tasked with fact-checking Teh Government™.
When Democrats are in office, the media see themselves as the People’s Information Referees, tasked with fact-checking attacks on Teh Government™.
So, people who think the media are biased, they’re just rubes. Or evil.
Probably both. AND WHY WON’T THEY READ/WATCH US!!!???
You know, if it hasn’t been clear yet, this sort of carping really gets on my nerves. The thing that bothers me isn’t even so much the broad sweep mcgruder claims to make of Pres. Bush’s failures.
What bothers me is what mcgruder leaves out, the history that didn’t happen, the history that would have come had G W Bush never been in office. What “ticket to fucking heaven for the GOP” would we have had with John Kerry for instance. Or Albert Gore, for another plausible nightmare.
We had a binary choice and chose as a nation to trust George Bush. He did some things well and others not so well. But he betrayed no-one. By and large he did what he said he would do. He did better in many things than I thought he might and worse in some than I had hoped. The unyielding opposition he has faced is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
I’d prefer we could give the carping a break for a while and return to our evaluations of Pres. Bush when we’ve got a bit of temporal distance from the events and hence, hopefully a bit less emotional investment in running him down.
To hell with “tickets to fucking heaven,” for which I don’t look to politicians (or reporters or celebrities of any stripe) anyway. I will always trust a “lightly tenured” governor over a Senator. Always.
In orientation, freshman Senators receive a ballectomy and a lobotomy. In that order. Unless they’re women Democrats — they’re allowed to keep their testicles.
c’mon now guys…everyone knows that there’s no way anyone as provincial and lowly as a mere governor could possibly get elected president or vice-president when there’s a SENATOR or two in the race…
right? I mean..governors..seriously…two weeks ago they were what, like DA’s or school board members, or wrestlers or book-writin’ fellers…
LMC: And your point? ;-)
can have the honor of setting the clippers at #2 and pawing at my head for ten minutes or so.
Happyfeet: you don’t have to pay for that.
Seriously, once or twice and you can get the hang of most short men’s haircuts.
It’s not just the money, it’s the time saved on reading shit magazines and listening to inane conversations.
Seriously, once or twice and you can get the hang of most short men’s haircuts.
How long for tall men?
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Then you need to add the cost of an extension cord.
I don’t always pay but there’s a supercuts across the street I have to pass to go to the thai and mexican places I’m trying to quit going to and if there’s no line sometimes I duck in there. Who else goes there is Kathy Najimi which is kind of a point in her favor I think even if she’s probably a loony baracky voter. Also lots of gay porn stars.
[…] more on columnists who’ve gone apoplectic over the […]
[…] “Even Female Conservative Pundits Embrace Palin Bashing” […]
Real prose writers as opposed to the composted variety found at the Times are defamed by columnists upset because their professional propaganda offers nothing close to being heart-felt. Nothing personal to the individual reader ever comes out of their writing excellence. Thus, it is as much envy as anything else which disturbs the powers that be. Of course she is down on Palin. Palin speaks for the citizen. She knows how to tie words together well, but not how to have them received by the heart! I will always have a hard time separating Peggy and the Times because I see them both in this parallel.