We learn that Peggy Noonan is at her heartfelt best, noting as she does — clearly, and not for the first time (though probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 or 5 times by now) — that this Obama fellow, despite his manufactured polish, his practiced speech, and his inflated credentials, may just prove ill-equipped to really lead effectively and handle the challenges facing the nation.
— Many of which wouldn’t be facing the nation in the first place had not ostentatiously cosmopolitan and “pragmatic” GOP pundits like the ubiquitous Peggy Noonan so disturbingly creamed over candidate Obama and his academic bona fides — which amounted to studies of critical race theory, race and law, the promotion of Marxism using the language of liberty as its camouflage, and mau-mauing the flak catchers, all of which requires nothing more than a willingness to parrot back leftist talking points to leftist professors looking to turn you into activist leftist foot soldiers and then, if you happen to have the right pedigree, perhaps even greater things.
Or, to put it another way, one of the women who helped guilt the American people into electing a transformative Marxist with a dubious background and no governing experience, a man who, after his drug-addled youth, hung out with domestic terrorists, academic (and activist) anti-Semites, and got his religious counsel from a man steeped in hatred of Whites and Jews, as head of the free world — while simultaneously sneering down her nose at figures like Sarah Palin, who has proven over the course of time to be every bit as prescient as Ms Noonan was bamboozed, hoodwinked, and gloriously conned — is now writing to tell us the President is not who he promised he’d be.
As if we haven’t been alive the last five years, or as if we were the ones whose snobbery and reflected egoism caused us to buy this charlatan’s obvious and vapid bullshit in the first place.
Sure, she seems to say. I maybe once very vocally believed in this sonorous-sounding, well-educated and Historic half black man, because to do so marked me as a post-partisan thinker, a wordly non-ideologue willing to embrace the completely transformative politics of the first post-partisan, post-racial President, the man who would slow the rise of the oceans and heal the country of all its accumulated psychic wounds by dint of having attended the right schools and being, as his Democratic colleagues reminded us, ever so clean and articulate! But heavens, if he hasn’t fucked things up! Have you all noticed? Because I’m beginning to, which means I must bring my insights to you — who likely aren’t as attuned to the pulse of America as am I.
I’m beginning to think — in all seriousness — that the GOP version of public sector unions is keeping alive and keeping protected the insular club of pundits that, for so much of their careers, are dazzlingly and consistently wrong about just about everything.
But then, I suppose the consistency and the familiarity that comes with keeping the same opinion-drivers in column inches is worth the disastrous misreadings of political moods and individual candidates.
Because of the pragmatism! And of course, the comity!
Every single person with a lick of sense knew Barack Obama was nothing more than an empty suit with mad newsreader skills. Those same people screamed at the Noonans and Frums of the beltway that they wrong.
And the so-called “smaht set” is now just catching on?
Or, are the beltway Noonans just trying to save their own hides because they sold out?
I’m going with option B.
When it was fashionable to be supportive of the clean and articulate Senator of the well creased pants, Peggy went along. Now that the fashion is changing, Peggy needs to explain why we need to make room for the new hawtness that’s about to make it’s fall debut.
And by new hawtness, I mean old cankles.
Oh, and thank you for the reminder that Peg isn’t saying anything that Sarah Palin hadn’t already said during her acceptance speech at the 2008 GOP convention.
In related news: quoth the Krauthammer, ” It’s sort of touching the way Obama believes in the power of his rhetoric.”
Well, why shouldn’t he when everybody else does?
And by everybody else I mean the establishment media that spins and massages as it’s spun and massaged.
(via Glenn Reynolds)
Canadian blog Small Dead Animals has approvingly noticed Jeff’s bons mots regarding crazy Aunt Peggy. What does it say when Canucks show more awareness than our home-grown dextrosphere?
They think he is sophisticated.
but propaganda slut peggy knows the rizzle dizzle
that second line was not opposed to be italicky
is this Sarah Palin the same prescient whore who endorsed Meghan’s piece of shit coward daddy for Senator plus also Orrin Hatch?
Can’t Peggy just say it? I wanted to fuck him so badly that I voted for him and tried to rationalize it. I’m sorry.
I just wish there were a way to ensure that every biography of Dear Peggy (and those like her) ended with a paragraph like:
We are fortunate that we live in an era that provides us the means to remind our countrymen that our tastemakers and opinion leaders are deeply flawed, and that most of their supposed wisdom is little more than pretense. I just hope we can get the message through (or around) the deflector screens that protect the Beltway and the Island.
Tragic, really. The Yellow Menace just can’t help himself.
Nor will he seek help from qualified professionals, which is more the pity.
During his first run for the presidency, my eldest–in high school at the time–said of Senator Obama “he talks a lot, but he never says anything.”
If a bright high schooler could see through him, why couldn’t Noonan?
Oh, and…
Shut up, feets.
I had a fun discussion the other evening about “why don’t Americans respect their president”. When I asked why respect was owed to somebody as terrible as Obama, who patently does not respect most of the populace, I was asked whether Obamacare had committed a hate crime against me. When I pointed out the “if you like your plan” etc. lies I was told that it wasn’t the administration’s fault for making a bad promise, it was the fault of the several million Americans who were getting plan cancellations for liking bad plans.
Because liking a bad insurance plan is like liking a car that’ll roll over and explode at its first convenience, you know.
I had to quit the argument at that point because I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
Because it was never about him. It was about her feeling noble about herself.
Kinda like how it’s not really about Sarah Palin with the rodent.
TW, my boys both opined “Man, this guy is douche-bag.”
We have smaht kids.
I recommend lighting them up with a flamethrower. With podpeople, that’s the only way to be sure.
While Peggy is correct in her current assessment of Obama, it doesn’t answer the question as to WHY SHE FUCKING DIDN’T NOTICE ANY OF THIS SHIT IN 2008?
She is not absolved because she noticed – finally – when about 60% of the population have noticed as well.
I’ll see about the flamethrower in the future.
Honestly I couldn’t argue with it beyond that, either. The incredible … I’m not even sure what … required to claim that no one actually lied there is breathtaking.
If it had really been the case that 10% or 40% or 75% of healthcare plans were bad plans that were a literal disaster waiting to happen (as soon as some contingent circumstances were met that caused them to detonate and kill their users), why “if you like your plan you can keep it”? Why not “we’re going to get you much better plans, hold tight”? It’s like if the proto-FDA had declared in the wake of The Jungle, “we’re not going to change anything about meat packing regulation so if you like your sausages with human fingernails in them, you can keep them”.
Mark Levin endorsed Hatch, as well. He regrets it and has apologized for it. I myself found Hatch’s defense of conservative judicial candidates laudable.
Go on. Call Levin and me fake conservatives and cunts, you RINO humping douche. But for the irony, make sure you’re wearing your “GIVE ME JEB OR GIVE ME DEATH” sweatshirt when you do so.
wearing your “GIVE ME JEB OR GIVE ME DEATH” sweatshirt
I think American Crossroads sells that in their Zazzle shop.
The Yellow Menace already designed his own. With rainbows and sparkles on.
I wonder how Peggy will cope with eight years of Hillary Clinton. Actually, I don’t wonder. I already know.
. . . she noticed – finally – when about 60% of the population have noticed as well.
But that right there is the thing. It seems like the origin of the deal with Peggy is not about noticing something regarding TheClownDisaster as such (which she may or may not have done, even back in 2007-8, but merely kept to herself), but about noticing something about the 60%+ noticing something in both instances, then and now, whether that ‘something’ happens to be of any worth beyond merely encompassing the passing frivolous opinion of the 60%+, which simple Peggy can then trumpet as a worthy. Once the 60%+ has taken it up, in other words, simple Peggy can safely adjust her boilerplates to a newer worthy.
Slewfoot, quite.
Granted, this is a collection of Politico pieces, but Noonan wasn’t exactly helpful as recently as 2012.
i did n0t endorse Hatch also i did not endorse the Meghan’s coward daddy
why??
oodles of prescience
i has it
Jeff, wasn’t Hatch’s primary opponent to the left of Hatch by a considerable margin?
“but propaganda slut peggy”
Happyfeet is apparently an alumni of the Ed Schultz school of deep thinkology.
Not to mention an abundance of prepubescence.
What is funny to me is that I never hear any one of the numerous liberals I work with bragging about voting for Obama. Yes, day after first election, high fives all around but now, I hear nothing.
Bg, I was at the walmart ammo counter in park city, Utah, recently and the guy ahead of me said, “I can’t believe that I actually voted for him.”
I’m thinking that a lot of people are coming out of their self-induced haze.
wait til next year. baracky he’s a effin’ a’hole says newly uninsured!!11!!
Were you tempted to reply, “I can’t believe you actually voted for him either. I mean, you obviously have more brain cells than a shiitake mushroom. What happened?”
Not to rain on your parade, but maybe Noonan’s speaking to the other RINOs taken in as she was. In that, maybe she’s not totally useless.
Some people just need to get burned in order to learn anything.
What form, exactly, should penance take for the ostensible conservatives who took four or five years to emerge from their self-imposed rationalizing haze?
As others have noted, it’s nice that they finally see the damage being done, but it doesn’t change the fact that they helped make it happen. I used to be something of an elitist, but this experience has knocked the sheen right off the highly credentialed. There’s so much more to it than just being smart.
Penance, charles? Sen. Pryor wants to know how we can even ask for such a thing.
Sillme, I forgot that it’s all indulgences now.
(Sorry, that was supposed to read:) Silly me, I forgot that it is all indulgences now.
“I can’t believe that I actually voted for him.”
Most anywhere else I’d let that pass with a sigh, maybe a chagrined nod of acknowledgement.
But at an ammo counter???
The only thing preventing the administration of a slap upside the head would be the inadequacy of the gesture.
We are the change we’ve been
waiting forwarning you about!“What form, exactly, should penance take…?”
Long walks off short planks.
ThomasD, I gave a combination snort and choke and the customer and counter guy both smiled.
The only saving grace was that this was Park City, which tends to be more liberal than Salt Lake City (dicentra, correct me if I’m wrong).
But the fact that so many normally clear-headed people voted for him exhibits their evident willing suspension of disbelief, whether it was because it would be an historic first, penance for perceived or actual earlier racism, the over-arching power of the media, or BO’s hypnotic speechifying.
Maybe he’s a Pied Piper – and I don’t denounce myself if “pied” has any racist connotation in the minds of the listener. My intent is what counts, as our proprietor routinely reminds us.
McG, I’m just not as quick on my feet with retorts as I used to be – my best ones come to me minutes, even hours later. Besides, it was Utah. At an ammo counter. Where many people carry concealed. Heinlein posited that an armed society is a polite society and I try to remember that.
[…] Jeff Goldstein also read Peggy Noonan’s latest, her devastating critique of Obama’s leadership, and he’s a lot less forgiving of her behavior in 2008 than I am. […]
[…] So, I stayed around there for a bit and found this which got me to Small Dead Animals which linked the following quote about Peggy Noonan from Jeff at Protein Wisdom […]