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Four Presidents and a Funeral (Pure CRAP not worth the Bandwidth)
Opinion Journal ^ | 2/10/06 | Peggy Noonan [a aged marooon]

Posted on 02/10/2006 5:57:17 AM PST by harpu

The tripe written by this aged marooon is little more than a self-serving display of her age, admiration for the Klinton's political skills ["God I love them."], and dislike for our president.

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
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To: DOGEY
Interesting POV, actually . . .
I thought so too.

But I still think Carter is an idiot. If you lived through his presidency, it's hard to think otherwise.

Noonan is pretty blunt about Jimmy:
A former president, a softly gray-haired and chronically dyspeptic gentleman who seems to have judged the world to be just barely deserving of his presence, pointedly insulted a sitting president who was, in fact, sitting right behind him.
Let's face it, the title of "Worst president in US history" has some fierce competition: Sorta makes you wonder if the republic can stand one more Democratic president, doesn't it?

81 posted on 02/10/2006 1:54:22 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: harpu
You've been asked, repeatedly, to explain exactly what bothers you about her column. This seems a monumental, if not impossible, task for you.
What you, et al, did was scan thru Peggy's column and not being able to comprehend it's intent and meaning, became enraged because you thought it was an 'anti-Bush' screed.
82 posted on 02/10/2006 2:26:59 PM PST by jla
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Comment #83 Removed by Moderator

To: RobFromGa
You think this column makes Noonan appear conservative?

I'd say it makes her appear Jeffersonian. This is not about Bush, Clinton, and the others per se. It's about the American ideal, uniquely ours.

84 posted on 02/10/2006 2:44:36 PM PST by jla
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To: jla; harpu; RobFromGa; PeskyOne; tallhappy

I will preface this by saying that Peggy Noonan is not my cup of tea. Her writing leaves a cloyingly sweet aftertaste. (Her speaking, too.) Worse, it is too often metaphor in search of a thought.

That said, I thought her analysis of Coretta Scott King's funeral was interesting and coherent.... (AND provocative... as you all have so vociferously demonstrated.) ;)

But then I came to this jumbled mess of contradiction:

Amid all the happy bombast [bill clinton] was the one who pointed at the casket and said, "There's a woman in there." He talked about Mrs. King in good strong plain terms. Yes, he caused a quarter-second of awkwardness when he said of the beautiful Coretta that even at age 75 she still had the goods, but in moments of exuberance we all forget our own history.

ASIDE: Surely Ms. Noonan understands that clinton's mummy-redux moment wasn't an example of a momentary event-induced lapse but rather a demonstration in real time of this depicable misogynist's real opinion of women.

The real news was how the Clintons used the funeral to unveil how they will run in 2008: Together, side by side, with beautiful hairdos. I haven't seen them like this--both standing at the podium--since 1992, when they were new.

ASIDE: Superficial. And wrong. What is happening here is not the clintons 'side by side,' but rather, the clintons conflated.

Having failed to snare the Nobel Peace Prize by ignoring terrorism, clinton has apparently decided to intensify his America-bashing on foreign soil, the method employed by Jimmy Carter to great (if somewhat belated) effect. (The Nobel committee, sufficiently mollified only after 24 years of the peanut president's America-bashing, awarded Carter his 1978 Peace Prize finally in 2002.)

Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the missus, the other half of the clinton construct, maintains her hawkish pose (though not without bird problems of another sort).

Yet another example of the clinton conflation ploy, (see SCHEMA PINOCCHIO: how the clintons are handling the hillary dud factor), this variant allows "clinton, the construct" to hold two mutually exclusive positions simultaneously, thereby enabling the missus to avoid in '08 the trap that repeatedly ensnared the ever 'nuanced' Kerry in '04.

Do you now understand how stupid the clintons think you are?

A CALL TO IMPEACH CLINTON IN ABSENTIA
Mia T, 11.17.05

REINVENTING HILLARY... AGAIN
(clinton machine dumps Geena Davis for Margaret Thatcher)
how the clintons are handling the hillary dud factor2
Mia T, 11.23.05


In the years since, after the health-care failure and the Whitewater scandals, the West Wing attitude toward the president's wife was a quiet and respectful "Get that woman off the podium!" Not anymore. All is new again. Mrs. Clinton has clearly been working on her public speaking, and attempted to use her hands as her husband uses his, now in an emphasizing arc, now resting on her chest. But his are large, long and elegant, and hers are puffed and grasping.

ASIDE: Everyone knows that hillary is a dud and that no amount of money or spin will change that plain fact.. Everyone, that is, except Noonan. (And as for the gesticulation training, check out my latest flash movies of missus clinton.)

And I'm amazed that Noonan would romanticize clinton. Not even Esquire missed the hands and their connection to the phallic. His are grotesquely large, clawlike, threatening. They are not the elegant hands of, say, a surgeon or a pianist. They are the viselike hands of a rapist.

Yes, all of missus clinton's appendages are puffy and much too short even given her squat, low-center-of-gravity torso. But both clintons have grasping hands. They may be grasping for different things, but they are grasping.

 

Both Clintons spoke in the cadence and with the imagery of the Bible. Mrs. Clinton's first words, in which she referred to Mrs. King's brave decision to continue her husband's work after his murder, were steeped in religiosity. "As we are called, each of us must decide whether to answer that call by saying, 'Send me.'" She ended with, "The work of peace never ends. So we bid her earthly presence farewell. We wish her Godspeed on her homecoming. And we ask ourselves, 'Will we say, when the call comes, "Send me"?'"

Oh I think we will, Ms. Meanieface!

If you don't understand that Mrs. Clinton was rehearsing her 2008 announcement speech, then you are a child and must go home and have a nice cup of cocoa.

This is what is coming: I have had a blessed life. And like so many people I could choose, after all these years, a life of comfort. Watch it from the sidelines, tend to my own concerns, watch the garden grow. But our nation calls out. And if we are to be Americans we must meet the call. "Send me."

With Bill nodding beside her, his hands clasped prayerfully in front of him, nodding and working that jaw muscle he works when he wants you to notice, for just a second, how hard it is sometimes for him to contain his admiration.

God I love them.

Four Presidents and a Funeral
Peggy Noonan
02/10/2006

ASIDE: Even here she doesn't quite get it. The clintons aren't merely analogizing. They are, as is their wont, setting up a false equivalence with heroic figures.

And how much truth and how much facetiousness is in that last sentence, anyway?



85 posted on 02/10/2006 3:48:27 PM PST by Mia T (Stop Clintons' Undermining Machinations (The acronym is the message.))
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