Why in the hell does any newspaper print anything written by Peggy Noonan? She can turn a phrase, sure. But the woman seems close to insane. It was bad enough when she was just offensive - writing columns on, for example, how happy she felt after alerting the police to the fact that there were dark-skinned men with cameras on Fifth Ave. in the wake of 9/11. But this is positively unhinged. Richard Nixon is the Great Satan to liberals? Chuck Colson (who even she notes was up to no good) was a hero of Watergate? Mark Felt is to blame for Pol Pot and pulling out of Vietnam? As much as I bash many of the columnists of the New York Times (and with good reason) the Wall Street Journal 's columnists and editorial writers make them appear to be beacons of wisdom and insight.
One other thought on this column - not that I should expect anything like clarity from this loon, but where exactly is Gerald Ford in her chronology? If she's going to say that some American was the cause of Pol Pot (not that I'm saything that's reasonable) it would seem like blaming the US president would make more sense that blaming an FBI official who was trying to bring administration officials to justice for breaking American laws. But anything resembling logic is clearly beyond Noonan's powers.
Posted by armand at June 5, 2005 11:04 AM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsDon't know if you saw discussion of the same Noonan column over at Obsidian Wings. I especially liked the massive inconsistencies this argument revealed: impeaching Nixon was wrong because millions died when he was distracted by the scandal, but impeaching Clinton was the right thing to do, because we stood on principal. I don't mind honest political disagreements, or even conservative ideologies. I mind that they can't apply their own standards consistently. Why anyone believes them at this point is beyond me.
Posted by: baltar at June 5, 2005 12:22 PM | PERMALINKThanks Baltar, I'd missed that(amd much else relating to news, commentary or blogs) since I've been out of town for a bit. Consistency is obviously not a strength with that crew. That might not bother me so much in some people - but this set is going to continually go around talking about how moral and principled you are, and why those traits mean they should rule, you'd think sticking solidly to certain principles (for example, not breaking conspiracy laws) would mean something to them.
Posted by: Armand at June 5, 2005 04:33 PM | PERMALINK