ON PEGGY NOONAN ON 4 PRESIDENTS AND A FUNERAL

Free Republic, Opinion Journal | 2.10.06 | Mia T

[Mia T]

ON PEGGY NOONAN ON 4 PRESIDENTS AND A FUNERAL

by Mia T, 2.10.06

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 provided an interesting and coherent--if disputable--point of view.

That is, until I came to this jumbled mess: (Noonan is in blue.)

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 slip, a disclosure, 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

Miss hillary of the 'plantation' wouldn't do here. 'The First Black President? was providing a warm body if not soul.

And as for the 'beautiful hairdos,' they tell us something about the clintons that is quite different from the glamour suggested by Noonan. The precision cut is counterproductive after a certain age. It can only serve to make all the crags and sags more evident. And the incongruity is wiglike, artificial.

So the precision cut, rather than a glamour marker, says 'old and fake'... and ultimately, 'clueless.' Just like the clintons, themselves.

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: Missus clinton is a dud and no amount of money or training or spin will change that plain fact.

Everyone knows this--that is, everyone except Noonan.

And as for the utility of missus clinton's gesticulation training, check out the hands in my latest flash movies.

I am amazed that Noonan would romanticize clinton. Not even Esquire missed the hands and their connection to the phallic.

clinton's hands 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 setting up false equivalences with heroic figures. It is one of their favorite methods of legacy inflation, second only to posthumous misappropriation.

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

Biography lends to death a new terror.--Oscar Wilde

  

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of Clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson posthumously misappropriated...

Mia T, THE OTHER NIXON

   

Yesterday, Daniel Patrick Moynihan died. Today, the clintons are arrogating his soul. Hardly surprising. In 1999, the clintons were not at all shy about seizing his still-warm senate seat.

One has merely to recall the Jefferson double-helix hoax to understand that posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation….

Standard-Issue clintonism

If misappropriation of Jefferson's alleles hinged on a broken line of descent, misappropriation of Moynihan's endorsement depends on a broken line of dissent. Like Sally Hemmings' progeny, Moynihan's later acquiescence is of dubious lineage

Mia T, Moynihan Myths

 

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

[Siena Dreaming]

take on Peggy, who is one of the finest and most astute political writiters in the country

Ugh...Noonan has a terrible writing style. I have never been a fan and I see that more people now are getting fed up with her airy-fairy style.

As far as her being astute. A person who bashes President Bush for using the word "God" in a speech is extremely far from "astute" IMO.

[gusopol3]

since Nazi comparisons are such an everyday thing now, weren't Adolph and Eva lovely together?

[Mia T]

Thanx for taking the time to comment.

Re the Esquire photo:

1-Analogizing to the Coulter shot has its limitations. Just because there were physical similarities, i.e., a weird angle that distorted body proportions, that doesn't mean the motivation of the photographer was the same.

In the case of Coulter, the motivation was likely relatively trivial: Someone was trying to make her look gangly and unattractive. It's hard to take a bad pic of Coulter, so they resorted to distortion to manufacture one.

2-OTOH the clinton photo, is, I believe, attempting to tell something about the person. You have to ask why a photographer would shoot a photo of a president in spread-eagle position, with the phallic area the camera focal point, with all dynamics (tie, legs) directed toward that focal point, with an arrowlike tie pointing to that focal point, with huge hands and arms like parentheses around that focal point. This was not random. Nor, I believe, was it trivial.

[Mia T]

Actually, I think the Esquire photo more closely resembles in political motivation the Reuters SOTU shot of hillary.

[Mia T]

Another point: The angle of the shot not only make his hands huge, it makes him small.

[Californiajones]

Mia, I do admire your verve and insight as well. But the digitized pix don't mean anything, they take away from your arguments. You don't need them. You need to be clear and concise as AJ said. A little Strunk and White and a little less ornamentation would be make your observations more poignant.

As for Peggy Noonan, her deconstructions are usually spot on in their sentiment, - -what is engaging about her columns is that she does take an idea and work it through slowly and logically, albeit sentimentally at times.

I do have to say that in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2000 election fiasco, Noonan's instinctual patriotism and deep love of the American ideal would at times make me cry. She is a great writer -- I always consider her columns just first drafts. She is at least thinking strategically, and we need more of that -- and guess what? Noonan is thinking strategically for the cause of conservative Americanism without being on the White House payroll; and without a big paying politico job on talk radio or something. ( Her WEST WING stint was just a early season stunt for Sorkin and the Left.) OJ has printed a few of my responses to her columns and they left out the last sentence of the last one -- I'd work for Noonan anytime.

[caveat emptor]

1-Analogizing to the Coulter shot ....

I may occasionally neologize but would never admit to analogizing.

2-OTOH the clinton photo, is, I believe, attempting to tell something about the person.

Good point. But the hands have to go some where. It certainly would have been less effective to have him grabbing his crotch or stuffing them down his pants. And clasping them behind his neck would have seemed a bit rednecky, not exactly the effect they were looking for.

[malia]

This is the best yet - but then I say that everytime.

I had a whole list of comments to send you then I came to posts 63 & 64!

The perfect couple!!!

[mtntop3]

Peggy Noonan, a good woman, has gradually and unfortunately become a narcissist of her own observations and words. She has come to like the sound of herself too much. May she soon rediscover the original Peggy N.

[mtntop3]

Peggy Noonan, a good woman, has gradually and unfortunately become a narcissist of her own observations and words. She has come to like the sound of herself too much. May she soon rediscover the original Peggy N.

[YaYa123]

"clinton's mummy-redux moment "

I had the same flashback! Let's face it, Clinton is sleaze personified, he can get away with inappropriate references because like the neighborhood idiot savant, he can't help himself. He opens his mouth and trashy references pop out.

Pollyanna Peggy. I guess she can't help it either. I mean, no way was Republican, New York Noonan going to criticize the 6 hour southern black spectacle of Mrs. King's funeral. Peggy couldn't write what I bet she really thought, that Mrs. King's funeral reminded her of the maid's Hollywood funeral in the movie, Imitation Of Life.

Mrs. King's funeral was garish grief run amok, with little to do on the passing of an elegant preacher's wife who lived a lifetime trying to preserve her husband's legacy. This made for tv funeral screamed " SHOWTIME!"

[YaYa123]

"clinton's mummy-redux moment "

I had the same flashback! Let's face it, Clinton is sleaze personified, he can get away with inappropriate references because like the neighborhood idiot savant, he can't help himself. He opens his mouth and trashy references pop out.

Pollyanna Peggy. I guess she can't help it either. I mean, no way was Republican, New York Noonan going to criticize the 6 hour southern black spectacle of Mrs. King's funeral. Peggy couldn't write what I bet she really thought, that Mrs. King's funeral reminded her of the maid's Hollywood funeral in the movie, Imitation Of Life.

Mrs. King's funeral was garish grief run amok, with little to do on the passing of an elegant preacher's wife who lived a lifetime trying to preserve her husband's legacy. This made for tv funeral screamed " SHOWTIME!"

[WaterDragon]

</i>She did write some INCREDIBLE speeches though!</i>

She helped. Today, Noonan seems bitter that she isn't some sort of top-dog in the White House. And wraps that bitterness in slyness. She completely turns me off.

[E.G.C.]

Mia T. Bump.

[Mia T]

;)

The hands are too dominating to have been a default position. But I think you have to look at the Gestalt here. This is a very bizarre presidential portrait... unless you plug in the fact of the president's serial predation of women.

This picture was taken at the end of his presidency. Perhaps, this was the photographer's comment on that, as well.

As historian Douglas Brinkley said of the clinton presidency when refuting clinton's Hofstra-apologia lie that he, Brinkley thought clinton would have been a great president but for impeachment--(Brinkley actually RUSHED to HNN to set the record straight): [It] will be "hard to get people queuing up a hundred years from now excited to see the "NAFTA Pen Under Glass."

But perhaps Brinkley is missing what apparently did not elude the Esquire photographer: clinton will be saved from oblivion by the magnitude and consequences of his evil.

 

THE FAILED, DYSFUNCTIONAL CLINTON PRESIDENCY
(DECONSTRUCTING CLINTON'S HOFSTRA SPEECH)part1: clinton's "Brinkley" Lie


AFTERWORD: ON CLINTON SMALLNESS--BRINKLEY MISSES THE POINT

[Mia T]

Thanks for the comments, suggestions.
Sounds like they are coming from a professional.

Strunk and White, indeed. It may not show, but I've actually opened my ragged, old copy a couple of times recently. ;)

'Spot on sentiment.' Yes. I suppose I see Noonan as more artist than thinker.

As for the images: my rationale for using them

[johnny7]

Her writing leaves a cloyingly sweet aftertaste. (Her speaking, too.) Worse, it is too often metaphor in search of a thought.

All the times I've seen her speaking as a talking head... she 'acts' as if some archivist is recording her every utterance. Her eyes seem to search-the-ceiling for just the right word. It's almost as if she thinks she's doing theater.

In short, the problem with Peggy is that she's too full of... Peggy.

[Mia T]

thx :)

[Mia T]

Not to be catty, but I think she once inadvertently disclosed her reason for looking up: a tauter jawline. Really.

[johnny7]

“THE STYLE: Creating 3-D models with lip-syncing and animation is not like picking up a brush or pen.” -MY RATIONALE

I've done some myself for children's educational CD's... and you are spot-on with your assessment. It's fun to run a loop and see when you've 'nailed-it'... by the smile on the person who did the audio.