[Graymatter]

Peggy Noonan ought to hang up her gloves. (I bet they are lacy and fingerless.) At least Jesse Jackson is, if she's correct, vaguely aware he's been pushed off the shelves by a fresh new product.

Noonan seems oblivious. I remember Noonan columns that made you want to stand up and march.

Check out Michael Novak's latest at http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak200407300829.asp

Particularly this: "In accepting the nomination of his party Thursday night, John Kerry could not quite bring himself to give both the president and the volunteer military who performed so well some credit for this great and significant advance for human liberty. The theme of liberty in the Muslim world belongs to George Bush. It was he who named liberty the only real alternative to terrorism."

Such an observation proves Novak is a deadly sharpshooter. Noonan used to be that good. Now she often misses the barn entirely.

[Graymatter]

I'm getting on, too, or I'd have remembered this sooner. Peggy Noonan's creeping irrelevance, even as she notes Jesse Jackson's, recalls the bitter lyric of Jacques Brel: "Que l'on vive à Paris, on vit tous en province quand on vit trop longtemps."

(Which basically says that when you've lived too long, it doesn't matter if you're in Paris, you're still in the boonies.)