ON PEGGY NOONAN ON 4 PRESIDENTS AND A FUNERAL

Free Republic, Opinion Journal | 2.10.06 | Mia T

[Mia T]

ON PEGGY NOONAN ON 4 PRESIDENTS AND A FUNERAL

by Mia T, 2.10.06

will preface this by saying that Peggy Noonan is not my cup of tea. Her writing leaves a cloyingly sweet aftertaste. (Her speaking, too.) Worse, it is too often metaphor in search of a thought.

That said, I thought her analysis of Coretta Scott King's funeral provided an interesting and coherent--if disputable--point of view.

That is, until I came to this jumbled mess: (Noonan is in blue.)

Amid all the happy bombast [bill clinton] was the one who pointed at the casket and said, "There's a woman in there." He talked about Mrs. King in good strong plain terms. Yes, he caused a quarter-second of awkwardness when he said of the beautiful Coretta that even at age 75 she still had the goods, but in moments of exuberance we all forget our own history.

ASIDE: Surely Ms. Noonan understands that clinton's mummy-redux moment wasn't an example of a momentary event-induced lapse but rather a slip, a disclosure, a demonstration in real time of this depicable misogynist's real opinion of women.

The real news was how the Clintons used the funeral to unveil how they will run in 2008: Together, side by side, with beautiful hairdos. I haven't seen them like this--both standing at the podium--since 1992, when they were new.

ASIDE: Superficial. And wrong.

What is happening here is not the clintons 'side by side,' but rather, the clintons conflated.

Having failed to snare the Nobel Peace Prize by ignoring terrorism, clinton has apparently decided to intensify his America-bashing on foreign soil, the method employed by Jimmy Carter to great (if somewhat belated) effect. (The Nobel committee, sufficiently mollified only after 24 years of the peanut president's America-bashing, awarded Carter his 1978 Peace Prize finally in 2002.)

Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the missus, the other half of the clinton construct, maintains her hawkish pose (though not without bird problems of another sort).

Yet another example of the clinton conflation ploy, (see SCHEMA PINOCCHIO: how the clintons are handling the hillary dud factor), this variant allows "clinton, the construct" to hold two mutually exclusive positions simultaneously, thereby enabling the missus to avoid in '08 the trap that repeatedly ensnared the ever 'nuanced' Kerry in '04.

Do you now understand how stupid the clintons think you are?

A CALL TO IMPEACH CLINTON IN ABSENTIA
Mia T, 11.17.05

REINVENTING HILLARY... AGAIN
(clinton machine dumps Geena Davis for Margaret Thatcher)
how the clintons are handling the hillary dud factor₂
Mia T, 11.23.05

Miss hillary of the 'plantation' wouldn't do here. 'The First Black President? was providing a warm body if not soul.

And as for the 'beautiful hairdos,' they tell us something about the clintons that is quite different from the glamour suggested by Noonan. The precision cut is counterproductive after a certain age. It can only serve to make all the crags and sags more evident. And the incongruity is wiglike, artificial.

So the precision cut, rather than a glamour marker, says 'old and fake'... and ultimately, 'clueless.' Just like the clintons, themselves.

In the years since, after the health-care failure and the Whitewater scandals, the West Wing attitude toward the president's wife was a quiet and respectful "Get that woman off the podium!" Not anymore. All is new again. Mrs. Clinton has clearly been working on her public speaking, and attempted to use her hands as her husband uses his, now in an emphasizing arc, now resting on her chest. But his are large, long and elegant, and hers are puffed and grasping.

 

ASIDE: Missus clinton is a dud and no amount of money or training or spin will change that plain fact.

Everyone knows this--that is, everyone except Noonan.

And as for the utility of missus clinton's gesticulation training, check out the hands in my latest flash movies.

I am amazed that Noonan would romanticize clinton. Not even Esquire missed the hands and their connection to the phallic.

clinton's hands are grotesquely large, clawlike, threatening. They are not the elegant hands of, say, a surgeon or a pianist. They are the viselike hands of a rapist.

Yes, all of missus clinton's appendages are puffy and much too short even given her squat, low-center-of-gravity torso. But both clintons have grasping hands. They may be grasping for different things, but they are grasping.

 

Both Clintons spoke in the cadence and with the imagery of the Bible. Mrs. Clinton's first words, in which she referred to Mrs. King's brave decision to continue her husband's work after his murder, were steeped in religiosity. "As we are called, each of us must decide whether to answer that call by saying, 'Send me.'" She ended with, "The work of peace never ends. So we bid her earthly presence farewell. We wish her Godspeed on her homecoming. And we ask ourselves, 'Will we say, when the call comes, "Send me"?'"

Oh I think we will, Ms. Meanieface!

If you don't understand that Mrs. Clinton was rehearsing her 2008 announcement speech, then you are a child and must go home and have a nice cup of cocoa.

This is what is coming: I have had a blessed life. And like so many people I could choose, after all these years, a life of comfort. Watch it from the sidelines, tend to my own concerns, watch the garden grow. But our nation calls out. And if we are to be Americans we must meet the call. "Send me."

With Bill nodding beside her, his hands clasped prayerfully in front of him, nodding and working that jaw muscle he works when he wants you to notice, for just a second, how hard it is sometimes for him to contain his admiration.

God I love them.

Four Presidents and a Funeral
Peggy Noonan
02/10/2006

ASIDE: Even here she doesn't quite get it. The clintons aren't merely analogizing. They are setting up false equivalences with heroic figures. It is one of their favorite methods of legacy inflation, second only to posthumous misappropriation.

And how much truth and how much facetiousness are in that last sentence, anyway?

Biography lends to death a new terror.--Oscar Wilde

  

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of Clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson posthumously misappropriated...

Mia T, THE OTHER NIXON

   

Yesterday, Daniel Patrick Moynihan died. Today, the clintons are arrogating his soul. Hardly surprising. In 1999, the clintons were not at all shy about seizing his still-warm senate seat.

One has merely to recall the Jefferson double-helix hoax to understand that posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation….

Standard-Issue clintonism

If misappropriation of Jefferson's alleles hinged on a broken line of descent, misappropriation of Moynihan's endorsement depends on a broken line of dissent. Like Sally Hemmings' progeny, Moynihan's later acquiescence is of dubious lineage

Mia T, Moynihan Myths

 

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

[Mia T]

ping

[wagglebee]

She did write some INCREDIBLE speeches though!

[Mia T]

ping

[SiliconValleyGuy]

It's a masterpiece, Mia! Thanks.

If you don't understand that Mrs. Clinton was rehearsing her 2008 announcement speech, then you are a child and must go home and have a nice cup of cocoa.

I love it. ;)

[Mia T]

Pure metaphor works in that format. ;)

[HateBill]

Peggy is in the process of undergoing "Huffingtonization."

[Darkwolf377]

I thought Noonan's article was right on until she got to the Clintons, and then it was like hitting a speedbump. "There's a woman in there," was more to me like Billy saying "Now I'm here to tell YOU PEOPLE what you should REALLY be talkin' about!"

[Mia T]

thx :)

[mkjessup]

She did write some INCREDIBLE speeches though!

Yes, unfortunately she fell into the trap of believing that she, and she alone was capable of capturing the "essence" of whatever the President was, is, or should be expressing in his spoken words.

Just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

[wolf24]

"Peggy is in the process of undergoing "Huffingtonization."

An insightful observation and analysis in my humble opinion.

[spectre]

Excellent, Mia.

"clinton's hands are grotesquely large, clawlike, threatening. They are not the elegant hands of, say, a surgeon or a pianist. They are the viselike hands of a rapist".

Brillant..

sw

[Captain Peter Blood]

Peggy has somehow changed and not for the better. I saw snippets of that funeral and it was a farce.
Of course what else do Democrats do at nice big funerals, they make it political and in the end Bush Bashing.
Pretty clear to all but a few including Peggy.
Amazing how we can put our heroes on pedestals but forget they like most of us have feet of clay and the Kings were no exception.

[Mia T]

thx sw :)

[x]

Peggy's an enthusiast. She wants to get excited about things, and has a cheerleader's love for whoever the star player is. It served her well in the 1980s, but that kind of enthusiasm can affect one's judgment. I guess it's an occupational hazard for speech writers.

That sort of misplaced love is also what you see at Presidential funerals. Peggy's already started to see Clinton more as a representative of her own younger years and "the good old days" and less as they politician he actually was.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Bump!

[Revolting cat!]

Stockholm syndrome? If I can't beat them, I'll join them? An application for a White House speechwriter job in 2009?

Reading this article at 6AM this morning made me sick. She's always been touchy feely, but this is pouring a gallon of maple syrup on your head. And maple syrup's Canadian, too!

[garyhope]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hillary Clinton is the absolute end of the world. Death and evil personified.

[Mia T]

ping

[PGalt]

Great analysis Mia T.

The use / mis-use of metaphor and analogy is a psychological uncoupling from reality, a make-believe world, an irrational world.

[altura]

She's still angry that BushII didn't choose her. She would have been entirely the wrong kind of speech writer for him. He is blunt and forceful. She is too wispy and allegorical.

I can't respect her because she let's her anger about that cloud her feelings for the President.

[Wolverine]

bump

[Left_Coast_Conservative]

Peggy missed it in this article. The funeral was a political rally. She even tried to make Jimmah Carter likeable. I used to like her but something has happened to her. She worked on President Bush's campaign and after the election I noticed a bitterness toward his administration.

[nopardons]

Your absolute BEST ever thread,to date; Mia!

BRAVA !

And FWIW, Peggy's been nothing but a simpering hack, for many long years now. I used to get terrible flack, when I said that here, but perhaps, now, more people will wake up and she her for who and what she is; not what they want her to be.

[AndyJackson]

I am sorry, but you need a lesson in enemy identification.

I know I am taking on a FR icon, but since you have the gall to take on Peggy, who is one of the finest and most astute political writiters in the country, I am going to be very blunt. I have never understood a single thing in your verbal diarrhea. I can read and learn from Peggy all day long. Even where I disagree with her it is instructive. You, on the other hand, stretch whatever you are trying to say over pages and pages of disgusting graphics and I have never understood what you point is.

I know you have a fan club here. I, however, am not a member of it, and will not be, until you figure out how to come to a point that anyone who is not amused and impressed by adolescently obscene pictures can understand.

In other words, what are you trying to say? I haven't a clue.

[Mia T]

To each his own taste. :)

But rather than engaging in ad hominem, why don't you defend Noonan and refute my argument with facts?

[Mia T]

And, by the way, this has nothing to do with viewing Noonan as 'the enemy.' This is an analysis of her article.

[kylaka]

Now, Now. If you can't say something nice .... . Noonan is gonna get smacked a lot more if she continues to write tripe. There is not enough paint in the world to make Hillary look "new" again. Most of us understand exactly what MT is saying. The Clinton's deserve every bashing they get, each harder than the last, in perpetuity.

[presently no screen name]

Mia, a thank you bump! Another incredible 'Mia T' thread.

[Mia T]

Thanx. :) As for the flack, I know what you mean. ;)

[Doc Savage]

Noonan!!! Shut the F Up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mia T]

thanx :)

[presently no screen name]

Peggy, is that you?

[nopardons]

Welcome!

Yes, I know that you know what I mean. :-)

[Mia T]

;)

[Mia T]

;~]

[dead]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hillary Clinton is the absolute end of the world. Death and evil personified.

If she wasn't so totally hot, she'd have nothing going for her.

[Revolting cat!]

Pay 'AndyJackson' no mind. It's not Peggy's, oops, real name!

[nopardons]

And just WHAT did you "learn" by reading Peggy's article about the funeral? How great the Clintons are? What Hildabeast's changing coifs REALLY mean? That it's more than okay for Dems to turn funerals into Bushbashing fetes? LOL

[nopardons]

:-)

[Mia T]

I assume you are not talking about hillary. ;)

[Mia T]

;)

[kylaka]

If she wasn't so totally hot, she'd have nothing going for her.

I'd be willing to call her hotter than hell, if she'd just go there.

[Mia T]

bump

[Faith]

They are setting up false equivalences with heroic figures. - Mia T

Yep. Remember when Sir William likened himself to David in the Bible? Great work once again, Mia T. You are a national treasure.

[MamaLucci]

I have never understood a single thing in your verbal diarrhea. I can read and learn from Peggy.....

That says a lot more about YOU than MiaT, IMH(and unsolicited)O

[Prost1]

Peggy Noonan is a writer in search of an adjective.

[MamaLucci]

Thanks for the ping, Mia T...........awesome post....as usual. ;)

[Mia T]

excellent point.
thx :)