Whatever her age, she is still, to my eyes at least, a fine and dignified-looking lady:
Posted on 10/19/2008 11:16:23 PM PDT by Maelstorm
I'll link to a favorite article by Noonan, from 2007, where her elitist snobbism was really on parade in a minute. I do think it's important to say that Noonan was fired from the Reagan Administration under Donald Regan. Granted, Donald Regan, himself, was fired eventually. But what's interesting is that Noonan wasn't invited back.
Here's the relevant paragraphs from that long-ago article about Noonan being forced to 'engage' with lowly working class New Yorkers:
"I walk into a shop on Madison Avenue daydreaming, trying to remember what it was I thought last week I should pick up, what was it . . . "Hi! Let me help you find what you're looking for!" She is a saleswoman, cracking gum with intensity, about 25 years old, and she has made a beeline to her mark. That would be me. "Mmmm, actually--" "We have summer sweaters on sale. What size are you?!" Her style is aggressive friendliness. In another shop, as soon as I walk in the door, "How are you today? How can I help you?" Those dread words. "Oh, I'm sort of just looking." "I like your bag!" "Um, thanks." What they are forcing you to do is engage. If you engage--"Um, thanks"--you have a relationship. If you have a relationship, it's easier for them to turn you upside down and shake the coins from your pockets. It is like this in all the shops I go in now, except for the big stores (Macy's, Duane Reade drugstore), where they ignore you.
There are strategies. You can do the full Garbo: "Leave me alone." But they'll think you're a shoplifter and watch you. Or the strong lady with boundaries: "Thank you, if I need help I'll ask." But your reverie is broken."
(Excerpt) Read more at maxinesplace.blogspot.com ...
I gave up on Peggy Noonan when she called for Mr. Cheney to resign. What happened to her brain?
oooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuu, I don’t think I want to be engaged by Peggy anymore!
I honestly think what happens is they who think they are so intelligent don’t even recognize when their minds are being warped by their surroundings and outright propaganda. It must be tough, it is easier to capitulate, it is hard to be a strong soldier for what is right and defend the truth against shameless lies especially when the lies are repeated so much that whether they are facts or not doesn’t really matter. That is where I depart Noonan, Parker, Will, and others.
I used to count on them to dig below the surface and go the extra mile to arrive at an accurate representation of the situation at hand instead now they now so glibly parrot the leftstream media. No one who is objective can look at Palin’s record and dismiss it the way it has. So she flubbed a couple interviews in hostile territory. Hell Joe Biden didn’t even know there weren’t tvs when FDR was President. If Palin had made a tenth of the mistakes he has since being chosen to be Obama’s running mate she’d have been drummed out by now and ridiculed down to nothing. The fact that she has held her own and is growing stronger is a testament to her faith and personal strength.
I’m with Peggy on this issue. Those clerks will go through your purse if you let them.
Now, I don't drink, but I took the phrase "Joe Six-Pack" as a reincarnation of "the Average Joe". And, well, what's the downside in appealing to average people?
That same article - "Palin and Populism" - had this paragraph:
I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America—small towns, sound values. "It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents "backwoods types," or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun. I'm not sure the McCain campaign is aware of it—it's possible they are—but this is subtly divisive.
Now, this sheds some light on it. Peggy Noonan sees Joe Six-Pack as a type - as backwoodsmen and regional arisocrats are types. More specifically, it is Sarah Palin's type, and she apparently ought to transcend it to appeal to everyone else - like FDR and good ol' Honest Abe.
More of the same paragraph:
As for the dismissal of conservative critics of Mrs. Palin as "Georgetown cocktail party types" (that was Mr. McCain), well, my goodness. That is the authentic sound of the aggression, and phony populism, of the Bush White House. Good move. That ended well.
As insults go, calling people "Georgetown cocktail party types" is fairly weak-kneed. In an era where we've gotten used to people calling our president Hitler, it's rather mild. But it put a bee in Peggy's bonnet, and now we know why.
What has happened to many of the so-called conservative women writers? It seems that they have too many lefty friends and want to look as if they are “objective” to those lefty friends. Here’s my sdvice to them: Choose which side you’re on. Write for that side and forget the other side. This is a cultural war and we cannot win this by pandering to the other side. They talk about unity, but we all know what they mean by unity...United Communist States of America! So, forget their rhetoric and fight the good fight...or join their side once and for all. Don’t use their rhetoric against us!
Self-important insulated elitist, if I may be redundant.
the whole *point* of Reagan was that he could connect and relate to every American. Yes he had great policies, yes he won the Cold War but the bottom line was that most people simply liked the guy. That’s what America needed in order to keep itself together through hard times.
Hey, I’m a snob, too. But at least I admit it.
Whatever her age, she is still, to my eyes at least, a fine and dignified-looking lady:
It’s in Al Gore’s lockbox!
I admire the sophisticated, effete city gal schooled on the mores of the time and place. As I’m a simple country bumpkin with cows and orchards, opposites attract.
It worked. She’s a fine-looking gal. No super-model nor Hollywood blond caricature, but real.
At one time, behind that serene face ticked a marvelously-orchestrated brain, a factory of prose and ideas, of speeches to be delivered by luminaries of the time. What happened, Peggy? We miss you!
It’s what’s one the inside that counts.
In the words of Michael Savage she’s an empty skirt.
There’s nothing worse than an old useless horse...
A couple of points here, and then you can flame away.
One, I think you construed Noonan's point 180 degrees backward. She was pointing out that, with that "Sixpack" trope, Sarah Palin had fallen into the bad, Hillaryesque habit of playing identity-group politics, whereas in Jacksonian America -- that is, Goldwater's and Reagan's America -- there is only one valid "identity group", and that is the People.
Two, people going off together and playing Algonquin-Club snob or Bohemian snob or Georgetown snob or this little group or that little group, and thinking of people in terms of "types" (although there is some sidewalk sociology to them) is actually not American thinking, but imported European thinking. Specifically, it stinks of social Darwinism, eugenics, pan-Germanism, vanguardism, Bolshevism, antisemitism, class-warfare(ism), and all the other 19th-century "isms" that got 60 million people killed in the 20th century, and set huge American armies in motion to go kick the crap out of people who were spreading that stuff around and killing each other in fantastic numbers never before imagined.
Three, a little populism doesn't hurt if the other side are being elitist snobs (elitist as hell, and vanguardist), but I think that Noonan is pointing out that you can't let yourself lose your bearings to that kind of thinking; if you do, Hillary wins. If you are a conservative, you have to stick to principles, not group-centered politics which is identity politics and tribal politics and race-pimp politics. That, I think, is her larger point.
Four, that all said, I think it's also true that there is a snob factor at work in the decisions of certain Wall Street Wing GOP'ers to take a walk, or to shank Palin out of hand. Chris Buckley's endorsement of Obama is the best example. He cannot possibly think Obama represents a party of principles, rather than a movement of power-junkies toward what they deem to be the central neural plexus of American society, from which they hope to mass-manipulate every man, woman, and child within the borders of the United States. Buckley cannot possibly be throwing in with UltraTermite Moulitsas of the Daily Kos. He might as well eat a gun and call it creme brulee.
But if such snobbery is the case with Peggy Noonan, I don't think it is demonstrated either with the quoted essay, or with your alternative quote on the subject of Sarah Palin's "Sixpack" remarks. On the latter, IMHO Noonan is closer to the conservative-Republican ideal than Sarah was. Which isn't to hack Sarah; but her "Six-Pack" motif -- wherever it came from -- isn't the best rallying cry for Republican principles, which are the conservative movement's stock in trade. At best, you could say it's shorthand for Bill Buckley's famous quote about the Boston telephone book, but Sarah has to spell it out better.
Peggy and Chris Buckley, perfect match on e-harmony.com
I wouldn’t say Noonan is a snob, I will say that she lacks a organic imagination, for Real America, Governor Palin fires the imagination based on her achievements and her life story, for the staid, Intellegentsia Crowd, she is akin to a female Daniel Boone with the intellectual curiosity of gnat.
That makes the whole discussion boil down to what appeals to whom, and in that sense the Peggy Noonan’s of the world will never understand the attraction to Governor Palin.
She owes her being anything other than a Long Island housewife or a buyer at Macys to her work with Ronald Reagan, himself a man who rose from truly humble origins. Of course, he rose in a milieu of humble men and women made good - Hollyweird - and only later moved in more elite social circles. But, even then, it was in the California context, where society has always been more open.
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