Comments on: Peggy Noonan, Reagan’s speechwriter…

By: Pat Dooley

Pat Dooley — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 03:47:20 +0000

Peggy Noonan’s opinions on anything mostly resemble what I have to avoid when I run on bridle trails. That applies to most of our coastal elites.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:19:39 +0000

I once knew somebody who lived in Rutherford, or East Rutherford, or wherever.
I ought to call her up and ask if the indigenous personnel sound like Noonan.
Think it’s worth the effort? Or can we guess?

By: PlatoBunker

PlatoBunker — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 04:16:42 +0000

Wikipedia reports “She is a graduate of Rutherford High School in Rutherford, New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.”

Ivy League envy is an East Coast depravity. Some other parts of the country are getting over it.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:16:59 +0000

Good Ole.
My basic accent comes from Norwich, CT. It’s said that in that area, a Honda dealer has to have his sign read “Honder” so the locals will pronounce it correctly.
But neither you nor I are running for president on the republican side, and so the self-anointed elites aren’t interested in how we speak as a proxy for being ignorant.
Noonan has a variant of what is supposedly all gone now, the “mid-atlantic” accent, sometimes referred to as the American theater received pronounciation, as somebody on this blog mentioned years ago. When I last looked up the midatlantic thing, it was said to be non-existent.
Point is, you have to work at sounding like that, and you don’t do that without a goal.
As I’ve said before, some people are invested in certain world views for personal reasons and they cannot, literally cannot, afford to change them, most especially cannot afford to change them to the point of admitting they’d been wrong.
Noonan, Buckley’s pup, any number of other so-called elites are in that group.
IOW, trying to convince them would be pearls cast in vain. I do think, nasty guy that I am, that the more facts which, afterwards, can be shown to have been presented to them, the worse they’ll feel, I hope. So that’s a reason to keep telling them. Changing their views…not so much

By: Gary Rosen

Gary Rosen — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:51:05 +0000

neo, that is impressive – May 2007! It makes me all the more disdainful of those like Noonan who should have known better.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:12:40 +0000

Gary Rosen: no surprise here, either. One of the first things I ever noticed about Obama was his odd lack of energy for the job (or even the campaign), and his proclivity for making excuses.

By: Gary Rosen

Gary Rosen — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:03:53 +0000

“What has been a surprise to me is how lazy, distant, and or disengaged he has been.”

It’s not surprising to me. Apart from his politics, many of us were suspicious of BO simply because he had never held a real job in his life before his election as POTUS. He kept getting bumped up the political chain despite a lack of accomplishment because he had a slick, favorable image. He is the emptiest suit ever.

By: Good Ole Charlie

Good Ole Charlie — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:47:32 +0000

RA:
Thanks to living with my wife 52+ years, I drop my terminal “g”s, pronounce “r” closer to “h”. That’s what you get for marrying into Maine…

Sp why not encourage Noonan? As mentioned, I don’t completely agree with her – as I don’t completely agree with Tea Party-ers – but I’m open to their arguments, if logically consistent.

Nobody loves a fanatic – either from the left or right. And sometimes both the left and right sound like mind-less fanatics.

Or as a noted professor of mine once said: “You can teach ignorance, but there’s not a damn thing you can do with stupidity!”

Yeah, as my life goes along, his wisdom becomes more and more obvious.

By: Trimegistus

Trimegistus — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:41:57 +0000

Michelle’s talking about how poor Barack is suffering, suffering because Presidentin’ is so hard. I wonder if she’s laying the groundwork for him to bail out in 2012 for “health reasons” and leave the mess he made for someone else to clean up?

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:38:42 +0000

Good Ole
You think that Noonan will, at the end, go with one of the Great Unwashed, somebody who drops the “g”, somebody with the hard “r”?
Few of us were in as good a position as Noonan to know what was what, and she went where she went.
Now, from time to time, she gets it. But not about politics. See, for example, “Welcome Back, Duke”. When you search for it, make sure you use the comma.