The Hack List - No. 8: Peggy Noonan

[blogslut]

Our annual list is here! This time, we channeled each hack's unique voice -- and let them "write" their own entries.

By Alex Pareene

Declarations

Sometimes, the old things, the things you thought gone forever, come roaring back, and you notice them again.

It is early evening in Manhattan on Flag Day, and I’m walking along on Park Avenue just north of 59th Street, a street I know well, a street I never go south of, when I see something unusual. A person. A human person, a man, short, with dark skin and hair. He is, I think, Latin American, perhaps a Mexican. He is sitting in a strange box that contains hundreds of gaudy candies, and inside the box there is even a small refrigerator containing soft drinks. Beside the candy there were magazines of all varieties, and below the magazines were these funny stacks of paper. We called them newspapers. The box, I immediately thought, was America.

In the grand American tradition, the man was selling all of these things, as all immigrants have, as we once hoped — no, knew, in our bones — they always would. Now, we’re not so certain. Now we don’t know who will sell us candy and Pepsi Maxx on 59th Street, tomorrow.

I bought a newspaper from the man. The Wall Street Journal. I opened the Wall Street Journal and I read it. There, in the middle, or at the end of the first section, was a newspaper opinion column. The column said, “Hey, read me!” So I did. It was by Peggy Noonan, who used to write words for a president. Now she writes words for everyone who buys this newspaper. Peggy Noonan had a lot of things to say, about how the president is weak and uncertain, how Chris Christie is good at playing a game, and knows it’s a game, and is a winner, and how amazing it is that Peggy Noonan can ride on an airplane and type thoughts about JFK on a computer machine. Peggy Noonan is on airplanes, and in airports, a lot, in real life and in her columns...

[Squinch]

1. Wow. She's worse than I thought.

Last edited Thu Dec 19, 2013, 12:15 AM - Edit history (1)

[Octafish]

2. You made my nose hurt.

Halfway out my nostrils, I tried to stop a kinder gentler sneeze. Really, a snort.

[Gothmog]

3. Why does anyone listen to this idiot

This lady is an idiot.

[Kurovski]

7. She's part of the Reagan myth, she let the world know just how sexy he was, and so,

she is just fucking hilarious.

[onehandle]

4. 'Hack' is a far kinder word than any of the many I have in mind. nt

[reformist2]

5. That is EXACTLY how she writes! LOL

[TwilightGardener]

6. That's just awesome.

[CTyankee]

8. She is half in the bag all the time and she sounds like it...

[Kurovski]

9. She's always offered some glorious and golden perch by the media.

Like a be-winged, holy grand dam of letters.

The respect accorded to her merely adds top notes to the delicious hilarity.

Ugh. She's like a pearl colored wart erupting out of Reagan Derangement Syndrome.

[pinboy3niner]

11. I'll credit Noonan for this, at least:

She's the one who dubbed Newt Gingrich an "angry little attack muffin."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203513604577143202951717744

[Kurovski]

12. Like I say: she's funny.

On purpose even!

She also is very well put-together...for a drunk. Oh my gosh, is she really a drunk?

[CTyankee]

13. She's had her moments on live TV to give you that impression!

There's a reason she no longer shows up at Morning Joe's earliest hour...

[Kurovski]

17. I know from personal experience:

Concealer won't erase the previous night's indulgences.

[Kurovski]

10. “Luigi is America.”

Alex done good.

Kick.

[Paladin]

14. A dead-on parody of this insufferable old "journalist." Recommended. (nt)

[hatrack]

15. This is freaking GENIUS!!!

"Peggy Noonan spent a lot of time living in a house — a cabin, perhaps, or maybe a modest split-level ranch, with a golden retriever tied up out back — called Ronald Reagan’s brain. And it was comfortable in that house, the furniture was lived-in and the television only played “F Troop” and every night children rang the doorbell to trick-or-treat or sing Christmas carols, and it wasn’t long before Peggy Noonan just stopped leaving that house.

Now, though, the house is cluttered, and it needs to be painted, and architecturally it no longer makes sense in the neighborhood. Peggy Noonan thinks the house is America.

Peggy Noonan thinks everything she sees is America. She walks into a hotel and she thinks, “This hotel is America.” She buys groceries and she thinks, “That cash register is America, and so is this lettuce.” She sees a child playing a Nintendo 3DS and she thinks, “Luigi is America.”

She says, “When Reagan came into a room, people stood: America just walked in.” Peggy Noonan’s problem now is that she is still in Ronald Reagan’s brain-house."

[Kurovski]

18. It really is superb.

Even better on a second read.

And no, Alex is not my son or lover.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

16. I wonder if she types with her eyes shut like when she drones on in person?

[Kurovski]

19. LOL

Sometimes it looks as though she's going to keel over when she goes into those tight-lidded little reveries. Like Duse creating a moment for the peanut gallery!