Peggy Noonan's Maximizing

One...take control of me?
You're messing with the enemy
Said its 2..it's another trick
Messin with my mind, I wake up
--Kasabian

At one point way back in the day, when I used to take hardcore ideologues seriously, I used to read Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column. Peggy is a former Reagan speech writer, and writes for the super un-serious Wall Street Journal editorial page, which is inversely credible to the WSJ's straight up news reporting. That is to say, that the WSJ editorial pages are basically crap and essentially some of the worst writers taking up some of the most valuable editorial space in the world.

The point at which my lifetime Peggy quotient was met was when I read this horrible column, in which she tries to point out how New Yorker's are pulling together after 9/11. Noonan makes a big deal of noting out all the different races of everyone on the subway one night (as any Reagan era relic would), telling the story of how a large black man saved another subway rider from an aggressive Jamaican woman.

Peggy, without any sense of irony, taste or sensitivity tells the black youth with only the condesenscion that a rich, white-privileged, Reagan-era republican can: "Goodbye, my brother" as she gets off the train.

Yeah.

Peggy's duplicitous BS went off the charts after her "not-so-off-camera" Sarah Palin debacle during the '08 election, when she first stated that the McCain campaign was "over" because of his choice of Palin for VP. She later denied the reference was the campaign and said that it was in reference to some Replublican mea culpa soundbite that no one believed.

Which brings us to the last time Peggy appeared on my radar, which was unfortunately today, when in reference to Obama's terrible speech last week she insinuates that not holding a hard copy of the speech during the telecast was akin to not being ready for an oil spill:

The president could move his hands because he was not holding a hard copy of his speech. Normally presidents have had a printed copy of the speech in their hands or on the desk, in case the teleprompter freezes or fails. Mr. Obama's desk was shiny and empty. A White House aide says the director of Oval Office operations had a hard copy just off camera, and was following along as the president spoke so that if the prompter broke he'd be able to give it to the president at the spot he left off.

But that would look a little startling, an arm suddenly darting into
the frame to hand the president a script. And the pages could fall. If one were in the mood for a cheap metaphor one would say this is an example of the White House's tendency not to anticipate trouble.

If one were in the mood - what an asinine qualifier. Oh, geez, yes, a hand coming out of nowhere would be shocking!! The Asian markets would TANK!!!

P-dawg is the one in the mood for cheap metaphors, as she spent three paragraphs discussing this crap before making this stupid assessment.

If one were in the mood, one could surmise the Peggy is taking small, inconsequential details and blowing them up to major proportions. This is known as Maximizing, which is an especically handy psychological trait if you are facing a deadline and have no idea as to how to criticize the president.

Even more annoying, is the fact that she quotes MSNBC's pro-Obama commentators in her criticism:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann famously said "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days." Chris Matthews scored "a lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk." Mr. Olbermann, on Mr. Obama's well-written peroration: "It's nice but, again, how? Where was the 'how' in this speech when the nation is crying out for 'how'?"

..... Essentially, she uses commentators able to see past ideology and party lines and criticize the president - something she could never, ever do, as a Republican zombie.
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I'm just hoping P. Noonan can stay under my own news radar. I haven't blogged in quite a while, and it is time consuming to write this crap down...