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After reading comments like post 21, then fifty-odd "jealousy, thy name is Noonan" posts, I and a few other poor souls posit that Noonan should be allowed to speak her mind about Bush's address, and that people shouldn't reflexively insult her just because they disagree with her review of this speech, that blind allegiance is foolhardy.

Excellent post.

I've determined (using their own standards) that those launching personal attacks on Noonan do so out of ignorance, spite, and jealousy. As such, their opinions are easily discounted ;)

//emphasis added for those too busy crafting strawmen to bother with reading comprehension

I, for one, do not deny that Noonan has every right to write her column. Unlike you, however, I do not think that Noonan is a particularly persuasive voice in the party or in the conservative movement. Her audience and appeal are quite limited.

I do think that you are seeing such a reaction on this and other threads is because her comments were so imprudent and uncharacteristically harsh. In addition, her comments have been and will be used by liberals to slam the President. Hence, some of us are having a darned hard time trying to explain why she wrote such a bitter critique. I, for one, cannot imagine that it's because she just "got it wrong." I think that folks are looking for an explanation.

Quite frankly, her prose, with its routine references to her dinner parties and the like, can be a bit self-indulgent and tiresome -- particularly when the actual column filed is supposed to be on a substantive event or issue. Most of us could care less about whether she had a run-in with Baroness Thatcher at Reagan's funeral. And based on some of her columns describing her relationships with other speech writers twenty years ago, I could see how observers could come to some of the conclusions metioned on this thread.

I know you might not like this (after all, your home page does contain two pictures of PN), but none of this necessarily betrays ignorance, spite or jealousy. If anything, I think some of us, my self included, have just become tired of her and fail to see her relevance as a pundit. Because she lacks any influence in the party or the movement, her only continued relevance is that she now wears the label of a conservative commentator who is in sharp disagreement with the President, ensuring her a welcome place in the studios of the MSM.