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'Ssssshhhhhhhh'
WSJ Opinion Journal ^ | November 18, 2004 | Peggy Noonan

Posted on 11/18/2004 4:16:59 AM PST by condi2008

One night during the past campaign I made a speech at an annual county GOP meeting in Pennsylvania... There were a thousand people milling about, making quite a din. They were all standing and talking and eating chicken fingers from hors d'oeuvres tables dotted around the room. There were no chairs. Normally when I speak it's to people in chairs in a hall.

I was introduced at a little podium and began to speak and the people in the back continued their racket. I made some jokes to get them laughing and draw them in to my remarks, but the roar continued. People up front started telling them to be quiet back there. They got louder. I looked out at them and said if they didn't simmer down I'd start to sing, which would be terrible for them. The roar continued. All I could think to do at that point was talk through it and over it and do my best and say what I had to say and introduce the next speaker, a U.S. senator.

He--it was Arlen Specter--understood the room.

He took the podium, readjusted the mike, smiled and said, "Ssssshhhhhhhh."

He said it very softly, drawing it out, then letting the sound gently disappear. Then he said it again, even softer.

And the crowd began to quiet....And good advice for our country, isn't it? After all the Sturm und Drang of the past few weeks our country would benefit from an absence of sound. Next week we mark Thanksgiving. Today, in anticipation, and after our fractious election, we could declare National Settle Down Week. National Be Still Week. Or National Give It a Rest Week.

The Great American Ssssshhhhhhhh-Out.

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: goss; peggynoonan; rice; specter
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To: counterpunch
[ Various people are attacked as "RINOS" "sellouts" and even "traitors" without ever being prefaced with "in my opinion." ]

IMO... a lot of/many republicans are neocons or ex-democrats and are donkeys with horns rubberbanded to their noses acting like RINOS and are groupies to elephants.. Noonan and Specter are two of them..

21 posted on 11/18/2004 5:16:02 AM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to included some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: counterpunch

She does speak in a style that suggests she wants the listener to go off and chisel her words in stone. I like her but she's much too dramatic.


22 posted on 11/18/2004 5:21:23 AM PST by leadpenny
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To: condi2008
This is advice well worth taking.

Enough already, leave us in peace!

23 posted on 11/18/2004 5:51:57 AM PST by OldFriend (PRAY FOR POWERS EQUAL TO THE TASKS)
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To: counterpunch

"Peggy Noonan's columns are typically overly sentimental, cheesy, and of absolutely no importance. Most of the time it seems she writes only to glorify herself."

Well, you always can read the drunken spew from Molly Ivins.........


24 posted on 11/18/2004 6:14:22 AM PST by SpinyNorman (When are the liberals leaving the U.S. did you say?)
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To: sinkspur
Comments from a friend:

Herein, a shockingly condescending and out-of-touch article from the WSJ's usually delightful Peggy Noonan. Her message?...

Attention all rural and small-town conservatives who were so essential to the re-election of president Bush:

Just shut up.

Yes, that's right. Just, well..."sssshhhh." So says the former Reagan speech writer and self-professed orthodox Catholic about the current Arlen Specter fiasco, and any other controversial appointees or nominees that you may have an opinion about. Just "sssshhhh."

You people served your purpose, so now stop annoying us down in DC and up in NY. Please be quiet, and go back to your blacksmith shops or root cellars (or wherever it is that you all work out there in the hinterlands)... and let us elite, professional conservatives go back to running the country, thank you.

Quoth the all-wise and long-suffering Ms. Noonan: "Give [Specter] the slot. If it doesn't work, revisit it later. There are enough battles going on."

Uh, no. Sorry, Peggy. Those of us who choose to live in those quaint little counties you say you can't distinguish from one another because they "all look the same" (you know, the ones that don't have any five star restaurants with really good wine lists...or pricey, chi-chi boutiques where folks like you might like to shop)... Sorry, but we're NOT going to "sssshhhh" and be silent, obedient little serfs when the very future of our nation is at stake.

Shame on Peggy Noonan, who has evidently forgotten whatever lessons in moral courage (and democracy 101) she may have learned in the honorable service of Ronald Reagan

See: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005907

25 posted on 11/18/2004 6:42:10 AM PST by St. Johann Tetzel (A fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer.)
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To: St. Johann Tetzel

i like your friend's comments.

and to heck with Peggy Noonan and her condescending shushing. she can shush it herself... and so can Spectre. high and mighty snobs.


26 posted on 11/18/2004 7:03:21 AM PST by sdpatriot
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To: counterpunch

Compare her with MoDo. You might change your tune. I think Peggy is a great writer and voice for Conservatives.


27 posted on 11/18/2004 7:16:48 AM PST by RushCrush (I Heart Halliburton)
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To: condi2008
A masterful article by Peggy Noonan, and quite needed, given the shrill hate speech that the liberals have been spewing against Christians and redstaters since the election. On Specter, Noonan expresses well precisely the concern about him. Whether she is too optimistic on being able to trust him when he gets the chair, I don't know:

He knows the Republican Party will expect him to support the nomination of judges free of a Roe v. Wade litmus test, or any litmus test, including a religious test. Many believe, and with reason, that a practicing Catholic isn't allowed to be a federal judge in America anymore. Mr. Specter will have to be more open-minded, more supportive, than he's been in the past. But he looks like a man who got the message, doesn't he?

28 posted on 11/18/2004 7:17:59 AM PST by Unam Sanctam
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To: condi2008
Too bad Peggy couldn't have gotten to Specter to shush HIS big mouth
the day after the election. He his reaping what he sowed.
29 posted on 11/18/2004 7:19:53 AM PST by MamaLucci (Libs, want answers on 911? Ask Clinton why he met with Monica more than with his CIA director.)
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To: counterpunch

Noonan is a lightweight. No wonder on one wanted to listen to her. She never has anything important to say. She is a good phrase maker, however.


30 posted on 11/18/2004 7:21:26 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: Snapple
I thought of you when I read this. :)

That we would have our central foreign intelligence agency OKing attack books that knock White House foreign policy, and during a close presidential campaign is remarkable, unprecedented, not good. The strangeness and immaturity of the resigning CIA officials' complaint--that Porter Goss's Hill staffers, new to the agency, had been rude to them--was best captured by Cliff May in National Review Online. May said: Would James Bond whine that Moneypenny had been rude to him? Would he run to Q and say, She got in my face, she was brusque, boo-hoo?

31 posted on 11/18/2004 7:21:30 AM PST by MamaLucci (Libs, want answers on 911? Ask Clinton why he met with Monica more than with his CIA director.)
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To: Guenevere
"#2...You should have prefaced your statement with....in my opinion..."

That goes without saying would be redundant.

BTW, if you really believed that, why did you not preface your statement with....in my opinion..., since it is equally appropriate.
32 posted on 11/18/2004 7:24:00 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: counterpunch
"She's certainly a wordsmith" Yes, she is a wordsmith, but I agree with you that she has nothing important to say. Compare her to Mark Steyn, who is both a wordsmith and who always has something important to say, and Peggy comes off as the lightweight she is.
33 posted on 11/18/2004 7:26:45 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: RushCrush
Peggy is gaga over Tom Cruise.

"Anyway, he struck me as a beautiful palomino with alert eyes and a conscious intelligence."

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=57

I think that says plenty about Noonan's intelligence or lack of it.
34 posted on 11/18/2004 7:33:23 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: condi2008
Good advice Peggy, shut up first, stop writing, then we'll shut up. Till you shut up first, we will continue saying what we want.

This woman has a weird feel about her, I have never trusted her. Reading what little I could stand of her article, she sounded so elitist, trying to tell us peasants to keep quiet.

Is it just me, or does anyone else get a feeling from her articles that she's a 'man worshiper"? I read her articles are the Pope and Reagan, and she just goes overboard in her admiration. I am telling you, I get a weird feeling about this woman and avoid reading her articles as much as possible.
35 posted on 11/18/2004 7:34:31 AM PST by Stringfellow Hawke (#6: Be seeing you!)
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To: Logic n' Reason; counterpunch

"Peggy Noonan's columns are typically overly sentimental, cheesy, and of absolutely no importance."

"Would that you could express yourself with a tenth so much skill as Ms. Noonan when you regile us with your comments on this web."

Would that Peggy expressed herself as succinctly and accurately as counterpoint.

BTW What does it mean to regile? Do you mean regale?


36 posted on 11/18/2004 7:38:10 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: Time is now
"Kinda weird..."

Yes, style over substance.
37 posted on 11/18/2004 7:39:25 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: edwinland
"Peggy Noonan is a wonderful person who has written some very fine lines, but she is way overrated."

She is certainly no deep thinker.
38 posted on 11/18/2004 7:40:12 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: RushCrush
"Compare her with MoDo."

Damning with faint praise. Compare her with Mark Steyn and she comes off as the overly dramatic, lightweight she is.
39 posted on 11/18/2004 7:43:23 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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To: Stringfellow Hawke
"This woman has a weird feel about her, I have never trusted her."

You are the second person on this thread to call her weird and I second that emotion.
40 posted on 11/18/2004 7:45:24 AM PST by Max Combined (Clinton is "the notorious Oval Office onanist ")
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