"Our Margaret"

SugarChuck and I used to exchange emails about "Our Margaret," by which we meant Peggy Noonan, years ago when I only feared that she was going off the deep end. I've said it 100 times, but her book on Reagan "What I Saw at the Revolution" is one of the greatest political books ever. Her lyrical columns on post-9-11 America still stand strong. Her writings on Catholicism, the Pope, and the miracle of Guadalupe got me as close to "my childhood's faith" as anything.

But she has become the Wall Street Journal's Helen Thomas! I usually avoid her column entirely, but the new Murdoch-approved format makes it more difficult. Today, she opens with the savage, atavistic elitism which first alerted me to a problem:

A moment last Monday, just after noon, in Manhattan. It's slightly overcast, not cold, a good day for walking. I'm in the 90s on Fifth heading south, enjoying the broad avenue, the trees, the wide cobblestone walkway that rings Central Park. Suddenly I realize: Something's odd here. Something's strange. It's quiet. I can hear each car go by. The traffic's not an indistinct roar. The sidewalks aren't full, as they normally are. It's like a holiday, but it's not, it's the middle of a business day in February. I thought back to two weeks before when a friend and I zoomed down Park Avenue at evening rush hour in what should have been bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Now admit it -- if you heard such Upper-West-Side blather on NPR you'd grab for a barf bag. Decades-old Reagan cred does not make it okay. Then, the heart of the story is how that horrible woman who had all those damned kids!

What we fear we're making more of these days is Nadya Suleman. The dizzy, selfish, self-dramatizing 33-year-old mother who had six small children and then a week ago eight more because, well, she always wanted a big family. "Suley" doubletalks with the best of them, she doubletalks with profound ease. She is like Blago without the charm. She had needs and took proactive steps to meet them, and those who don't approve are limited, which must be sad for them. She leaves anchorwomen slack-jawed: How do you rough up a woman who's still lactating? She seems aware of their predicament.

I have not encountered "The Octomom." I do find it very easy to avoid things like that (are we into blue-horse territory here?) but Noonan's revulsions speaks more about Noonan than Suleman. Like Governor Palin, this is a woman who is on television and yet is completely unknown at fasionable cocktail parties. Quel Horror!

Taking about the same amount of virtual newsprint, as usual on Fridays, is Kim Strassel's smart, well reasoned piece on the politics of the stimulus. It should embarrass somebody to publish them side by side.

Media and Blogging Posted by John Kranz at February 13, 2009 1:47 PM