Peggy Noonan, Teaching at Harvard: “You Have To Let Your Freak Flag Fly.”

Gawker.com ^ | 10/10/2009 | Foster Kamer

[Wontsubmit]

Three-steps-from-crazy-cat-lady WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan is teaching at Harvard. Our spies report: "Peggy's a ridiculous, hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all." They've provided us with her awesome quotes. We're presenting them emoticon-contextualized them for you...

[GVnana]

Somewhere David Crosby is wincing.

[olrtex]

I don’t understand the story or the comments. This is a waste of space and time.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Yep. Who cares?

[squarebarb]

It’s Gawker. Sometimes we need to appraise ourselves of the tiny obsessions of the minute circle of friends that comprise the New York youthful elite and its limited little thoughts or things that pass for thoughts.

[plain talk]

David Crosby? Jimi Hendrix - if six was nine.

[svxdave]

I always liked Peggy Noonan. I loved the work she did with Ronald Reagan. However, she has shown herself to be an elitist. Her attacks against Sarah Palin are unforgivable.

[GVnana]

Looks like this baby boomer needs to school you.

"Almost Cut My Hair" written and performed by David Crosby.

[Paige]

Peggy has been a major disappointment. As for Harvard, the college is a Marxist bastion of enlightenment (humanistic shallowness) and God haters.

Amazing how such institutions as Harvard were founded by men who believed in Religious Freedom and Liberties has now turned into a worthless Marxist commune.

Now that we know where Peggy is working, this explains why she has shown she is far from being a Conservative.

Good riddance Ms Noonan, what a shame to see a good mind go to dark side. My question would be: What would President Reagan think?

[bboop]

That’s how I feel. I liked her earlier stuff, her book on Reagan. I hated that she turned on Sarah Palin and swooned for Obama. That, for me, is crossing the road. I don’t read her any more. But I did enjoy this article and some of the funny comments.

[GVnana]

On further inspection, it's a close call.

1967 Jimi Hendrix "I'm gonna wave my freak flag high."

1969 David Crosby, "I feel like letting my freak flag fly."

[Huck]

“Almost Cut My Hair” was released in 1969 or 70 on Deja VU. Hendrix’s If Six was Nine came out in 67, so technically, Hendrix used the phrase first. Although Hendrix’s wording was a little different—Im gonna wave my freak flag, and WHaayaaya!!!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"You do not want to miss the weekly festival of swooning self-regard and misty incoherence that will be Peggy Noonan's "Study Group" for undergrads this year, during her fellowship at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. ...After about an hour with the woman, I'm happy to report that she seemed incredibly inebriated, and seldom more than a little coherent. Peggy was a ridiculous and hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all."

Is Michelle Obama in the class?
Sounds esoteric.
Are they reading any Leo Strauss or Harvey Mansfield?

[Clara Lou]

Did you read the item at Gawker? If you did, you'll understand. The woman is, basically, a highly paid, under-qualified idiot. And the WaPo publishes her.

[GVnana]

Yep. I think Noonan’s “let your freak flag” comes from Crosby’s lyric, but the term (at least musically) definitely originated with Hendrix.

[Clara Lou]

BTW, the emoticons the Gawker uses after her comments are hilarious.

[Finalapproach29er]

Her attacks against Sarah Palin are unforgivable.
***
Yep. They were snobbish.
Makes perfect sense she ended up at Harvard.

I believe most people go up to Ivy league schools out of insecurity.

[Sudetenland]

Ah, Precious Peggy....isn't she just so precious? What a smug, self-satisfied, condescending, elitist, pseudo-intellectual she has become.

Makes one wonder is she really is drunk most of the time. Maybe it's falling out of the spotlight after serving under Reagan that has caused to to become so self-absorbed and arrogant.

Her opinions truly have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous over the years.

[mc5cents]

As for Harvard, the college is a Marxist bastion of enlightenment (humanistic shallowness) and God haters.

From Wikipedia:
(Harvard) During its early years, the College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists in New England. The College was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Puritan churches throughout New England.[9] An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College's existence: "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery [sic] to the Churches…"[10] Harvard's early motto was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae "Truth for Christ and the Church." In a directive to its students, it laid out the purpose of all education: "Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Iesus Christ which is eternall life, Joh. 17. 3. and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.[11]

Indeed, how far they have fallen.

[plain talk]

“Almost Cut My Hair” was released in 1969 or 70 on Deja VU. Hendrix’s If Six was Nine came out in 67, so technically, Hendrix used the phrase first. Although Hendrix’s wording was a little different—Im gonna wave my freak flag, and WHaayaaya!!!

Technically? Looks like Crosby lifted the phase from Hendrix. As if any of those communal style hippies would have cared anyway.

In the gee whiz category there is an interesting story about how Neil Young and Hendrix got to Woodstock which matches another account I had read. here