Mock, Paper, Scissors

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan swanned into the Bush Library Opening Gala, an elegant woman languidly riding a crest of self-confidence and self-entitlement, a woman in her prime. Sphinx-like she looked about the ballroom to see all the familiar faces, all the right faces, the cognoscenti of the conservative world.

A passing cater waiter delivered a Mai Tai. “Courtesy of Barbara Bush,” he declared, as a thirsty Noonan gratefully accepted the frosty libation. “Mrs. Bush told us to welcome you with Texas hospitality.”

“And where is Babs?,” Noonan inquired. “I would like to congratulate her on this momentous occasion.” Just then Laura Bush glided past as if on roller skates, and staring into space. “I hate the way she does that,” Noonan murmured.

The waiter pointed into another room, and Noonan was off.

Swimming into view was Condi Rice, Dubya’s National Security Advisor-Secretary of State.

“George W. Bush is back, for the unveiling of his presidential library. His numbers are dramatically up. You know why? Because he’s the farthest thing from Barack Obama,” Noonan declared, accepting a refreshing beverage from a waiter. “Obama fatigue has opened the way to Bush affection.”

“Peggy, Dubya will always be one of the most beloved of all presidents,” Dr. Rice replied, frostily. “Some of us never stopped loving him.”

Noonan gave Rice a sideways glance, and her hand instinctively reached up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever. “Of course, Condi dear. Of course.”

Noonan moved on, determined to find Barbara Bush, to thank her for the invitation to the gala. Another waiter pointed Noonan vaguely to where Barbara was holding court, and Noonan swam into the crowd like little Elian being nudged along by angelic dolphins.

“Saracen Pig,” Noonan exclaimed to Dick Cheney who quickly replied, “Spartan Dog!” and then the two old friends both broke into peals of laughter.

“How the hell are you, Peg?” Cheney asked as he munched on some Dancing Shrimp.

“Dry as a bone,” she laughed as another Mai Tai magically appeared. “I missed the speech, how was it?”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Cheney replied. “Tears.” He tore into another wiggling shrimp

“So, at the end Mr. Bush wept, and not only because the Bush men are weepers but because he means every word of what he says, and because he loves his country, and was moved?” she asked.

“Well, he didn’t announce that he was invading Syria. Now that would have been a speech, Peg.” Cheney replied. “Say, you don’t suppose that they could make these things with something larger, do you?” Cheney pointed to the shrimp.

“You mean something the size of a kitten?” The two old friend laughed and laughed again. Cheney pointed Noonan to where Barbara was. “She’s promising to have some entertainment,” he said raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, Christ, she’s not going to bring out the pickle jar again, is she?!” Noonan exclaimed. There was a crashing noise behind her as some French doors shattered and the former first daughters, the Bush Twins, covered in mud wrestled into the room, hoots and hollers and taking bets in dollars. “Hi Peggy,” Jenna called out. “Are you gonna work the pole with us later?” Noonan moved on.

The party was a mad swirl of noise and Bushes everywhere! Jeb was there and Noonan could swear she saw Columba lifting a silver service into her oversized bag; Noonan dared not to think of what mischief his children might be up to, but then saw the daughter, Nicole, sitting with Laura Bush on some steps, their gowns hiked up, both of them looking glazed and dazed, vague Mona Lisa smiles and unfocused eyes. “Family bonding,” she concluded.

At last, Noonan went around the corner and spotted The Matriarch and headed to her as Babs was concluding a virtuoso performance of the Star Spangled Banner on her armpit. “Oh, Barbara, you must be so proud,” Noonan gushed.

“Hella Proud,” Babs yelled back, “It took 67 years but we finally got Chimpy into a library!”

The Presidential Wheel Turns
Disaffection for Bush gave us Obama. That explains the new affection for Bush. — By Peggy Noonan

UPDATE: our own photojournalist Axel Grease was there, and took these exclusive photographs that you won’t find anywhere else!

I’ve been trying to find an angle for the latest column from Dame Lady Peggington Noonington of the Brooklynshire Nooningtons, but her lede tells me that she’s A) she switched to the plastic-bottle hooch recently and B) she’s stopped caring:

“Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who’ll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethink or back down. Or maybe the public will get mad at both.”

Well, you covered all the bases there, Peg: we will get mad at:

1. The President
2. The GOP
3. Both

This is why Rupert Murdoch pays Nooner a princely sum to offer up the bounty of her political acumen. Where else can you go for analysis that essentially comes down to Maybe/Maybe Not? But she then goes back to her Mai Tai and tries to clear up the ambiguity a couple of paragraphs later:

“If the sequester brings chaos and discomfort, it’s certainly possible the Republicans will be blamed. But it’s just as possible President Obama will be. “

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Anyway, it is a mess of wingnut talking points strung together, an echo of Grandpa Walnuts’ existential scream of The One, the Celebrity in Chief and so on. It’s not worth wasting the time to do an Adventure parody post.

I think Peggy has given up.

Anatomy of a Column

he doors of the Naples, Florida Walmart glided open, and Peggy Noonan glided in, majestic, like the Queen Mary entering the port, an elegant woman languidly riding a crest of self-confidence. She swanned into the store to gather replacement supplies for her annual Oscar party (Ronald Reagan Salutes the Academy was the theme as usual), and the supplies were already running low and it was still hours until the Red Carpet.

The place was different from what it was two and five years ago, Noonan noted. Then, things seemed dynamic—what buys, what an array of products, what bustle in the aisles. This time it seemed tired, frayed, with fewer families and scarcer employees. “It looks like a diorama of the Great Recession,” she mumbled. Nevertheless, Noonan soldiered on with sturdy legs and ample calves to the libations aisle in the empty store.

Noonan grimaced a little, when she recalled the last time she was in Florida when she predicted a big win for Mitt Romney by counting lawn signs in this neighborhood. She reached for the familiar Bacardi bottles on the top shelf, so reassuring in a tempest-tossed world of sequesters and compromise.

“It is always cliffs, ceilings and looming catastrophes with Barack Obama. It is always government by freakout,” Noonan muttered to herself. “Meat won’t be inspected. Seven thousand TSA workers will be laid off, customs workers too, and air traffic controllers,” Noonan continued to fill her cart.

“Lines at airports will be impossible,” Noonan continued, working into her theme. “The Navy will slow down the building of an aircraft carrier. Troop readiness will be disrupted, weapons programs slowed or stalled, civilian contractors stiffed, uniformed first responders cut back.”

“Can I help you, Ma’am?,” the cheerful Walmart employee asked.

“Our nuclear deterrent will be indefinitely suspended,” Noonan laughed. “Ha, made that one up, but give them time.” The clerk backed away down the aisle shaking her head.

Noonan careened around shelves and displays trying to find her way to the produce section. Fresh pineapples are an essential ingredient to a well-prepared Mai Tai, and sometimes, like today, the vessel itself for serving the blessed sacrament.

“In a way it’s all brilliant showbiz: Scare people into supporting your position,” Noonan whispered. She blanched and paused at a table loaded with copies of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. and glowered at it.

“Oh, there you are,” the Store Manager said greeting Noonan. We thought you were in Liquor.”

“Mr. Obama thrives in chaos” she replied dryly. “He flourishes in unsettled circumstances and grooves on his own calm,” she continued getting somewhat louder. “He spins an air of calamity, points fingers and garners support,” and now she was shrieking at the manager, who calmly escorted her to the door, like the doomed Carnival Cruise being dragged to dock, and patting Noonan on the arm the whole while, while the clerk was wheeled her cart back to the booze aisle.

Government by Freakout–Obama’s scare tactics aren’t much of a long-term strategy–By Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan woke up startled, gasping for air, her flannel nightgown clammy and cold (and mysteriously on backwards). She had had the dream. Again.

It always started off pleasant enough: She was in the oval office of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever. She was working on a speech for him going over point by point the pauses, the nuances, the emphasis moments, and like the pro he was, he would get it right on the first try.

And then his chair would spin and there was Mitt Romney. Screaming ensued and gasping for air in a soaked nightgown (Franz of Lansbury, so soft, so feminine, so heavy when wet).

“You have to look at the landscape and see the shape of the land,” Noonan muttered to herself. These dreams were alarming, and unnecessary. “If I am going to dream of Ronnie,” Noonan thought with a smile, “then let me dream of Ronnie.”

Noonan rolled over and tried to recapture the dream. She was sure Ronnie was trying to tell her something from beyond this mortal veil. Zzzz… “The pendulum has swung toward Obama.” Zzzz…. Mitt Romney has “a damaged political persona.” Zzzz… “the economy is still weak and the jobs report on October 5th will be pivotal. A strong one may ensure an Obama victory. On the other hand, a poor one on the heels of a Romney debate win could re-align this race.”

Peggy Noonan was in Ronald Wilson Reagan’s oval office, the great man was facing her, and not Mitt Romney. A tingling wave of pleasure spilled over her.

“Ronnie,” Peggy began, “Dear Ronnie, tell me what I need to do to get that unpleasant and undeserving man, that Barack Obama fellow out from behind your desk.” Noonan took a dreamy sip from a Mai Tai she dreamt up, so cool, so refreshing.

“The president is reversing the decline that began with his “You didn’t build that” comment. For three weeks he’s been on a roll. The wind’s at his back.How did we get here? What can turn it around?,” she pleaded with the dream Reagan.

Ronnie looked at Peggy and smiled and handed her a pearl necklace that she put on. His strong hands reached for the phone, pressed a button, and his familiar voice, so kind and gentle, so paternal and soothing, so masculine said to Kathleen Osborne his personal secretary, “Send in James Baker. Peggy needs him.”

Noonan woke up screaming, in a soaked nightgown when a drooling 82-year old James Baker hobbled into the office, holding hands with George W. Bush and a butterfly ballot from Florida.

Romney Needs a New CEO
How to save a listing campaign, the Baker Way — by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonon opened one bleary blue eye and surveyed the scene about her: the remains of the party tent flapped in the breeze, a jumble of white folding chairs like so many elegant cranes standing awkwardly in a river, a tattered banner falling off of the back wall of the tent read Bacardi Salutes Peggy Noonan! It looked like the aftermath of a dirty bomb, when everyone had fled in a panic.

Noonan lifted her head from the table and felt her cheek where the little criss-crosses from the table’s surface had pressed into her flesh and left a pattern there, and at first felt a flush of shame that dissolved into a smirk. “America is always going over the top. We have gone over the top on security. Stop already. Life is risk. Be prudent, take precautions, but live.” Noonan fished in her Dooney & Burke bag (so supple, so chic) to look for her notes, and pulled out a stash of cocktail napkins scrawled in various inks and pencils. The handwriting sometimes looked like hers, and other times looked like someone mimicking her, swooping and slanting, and generally a slatternly display that would cause the nuns of her storied youth to grimmace in disapproval.

“Two days in, I had no faith in this convention. The hurricane tore apart plans and affected everyone’s mood. Normal chaos became heightened anxiety,” she mumbled to no one as she reached for the welcoming silver-labelled vessel that was cradled between her knees, “like K-Lo’s tear-stained copy of The Lives of the Saints,” she laughed.

Smiling shyly, Noonan’s little bird-like hand fluttered up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever. Noonan recalled the 1976 GOP convention, the Republican Party torn in two over Ford and Reagan. Before the speaking began, the California delegation was feeling frisky. Hundreds of delegates started to chant: “RAY-GUNNN!” And the New Mexico delegation would pause a beat and then answer: “Olé!” They kept it up—“Reagan!” “Olé!” Across the floor the New York delegation steamed. They were for Ford. So the next time the Californians bellowed “Reagan,” the New Yorkers, hundreds of them, bellowed back, “Oy vey!”

Noonan returned to her stack of disreputable cocktail napkins. “It started with Mike Huckabee. “He is a performer, he knows how to do this, and he made the audience listen,” she read. “Blah, blah, blah. Huckabee hits a …homer.” Noonan paused for a moment. “I hope that says homer,” she whispered, “and not…” her voice trailing off.

“I suppose I can fill in the blanks later,” she muttered, “I must have been running out of ink, Noonan declared. “No doubt Rupert has already secured the official videos of the convention,” she thought with some confidence, “if not most of the video from thousands of cell phones there.” She made a mental note to ask him sometime how he does that.

Noonan returned to her notes, pastiches, really, she finally decided. “Take THAT Sister Mary-Margaret,” she hissed to herself with some grim satisfaction that the $10 vocabulary word finally paid off.

“Ann Romney was stunning, sweet, full of enthusiasm, a little shy, a little game for the battle,” Noonan read, thoughtfully taking a sip from a fresh bottle she found nearby under a snoring Maureen O’Dowd. Noonan continued, “…it was scattered, full of declarations — “Tonight I want to talk to you about love” — that weren’t built upon but abandoned.”

Noonan adjusted a strap that was digging into her substantial décolletage courtesy of Bergdorff’s sadistic fitting shop. “She failed to make it new and so she failed to make it real.” Noonan recalled a vision in scarlet, giggling, with a lot of teeth–rows upon rows of them, startling white–and Noonan hurried onto her next epistle on a napkin.

Chris Christie’s entry just said big, and it was followed by “To the moon, Alice!” Noonan, looked around to ensure no one was awake or watching as she crumpled up the napkin, and took a long-pull from MoDo’s bottle, and then scratched herself, indelicately.

“Condi Rice was a star,” Noonan read, and then noticed a circle slash with the words Bush and OBL inside, and wondered what that meant. In much more shaky hand, she noticed that McCain was followed by Bombs Away! Noonan vowed to take better notes next time because these messages from the past few days were cryptic at best.

“Paul Ryan,” Noonan read with keen enthusiasm, “poster on ceiling, central planners.” She starred at the napkin, puzzled, but soldiered on McCain style… “teleprompter forced him to shift his eyes from screen to screen and deliver the good line.” Noonan rubbed her head, which stopped throbbing for a brief moment–teleprompters!–and Paul Ryan’s visage appeared before her, his icy blue eyes piercing her soul like one of Saint Sebastian’s storied arrows. “Young, too young,” she sighed shaking her head.

The next napkin baffled her as well. “Jeb. Milk.” Crumpled and tossed, it joined the others on the floor.

The next napkin was even more cryptic, “Sad Mormons on Parade, legal pad.” She crumpled that one up, too, and tossed it over her shoulder.

“The vibe of this convention has been weird. There has been a constant sense of something impending, some doom about to be delivered,” she declared to herself.

Noonan was very puzzled by the next one. “Look-up lyrics for I am, I said–Neil Diamond. Clint.” Then she recoiled with horror as she remembered the full import of this one. “Make my day, she muttered to herself. “Well that,” Noonan noted dryly, “is going to take some rewriting.”

Noonan patted down her hair and watched the handsome Hispanic men cleaning up the big tent, and took another thoughtful swig, and felt a warmth and calmness flow over her. Noonan knew that Marco Rubio would be next in the agenda and looked at her notes fondly. No notes on Rubio. Did he even perform? Noonan was concerned because as a rising star her readers would demand to know her thoughts on the handsome young man, so charismatic, so well-spoken.

Last napkin. “Romney,” Noonan read, “had to achieve adequacy. He did.”

Noonan stood up on wobbly but ample calves, and nudged MoDo with her foot, the snoring stopped. “Maureen, wake up. One requires the assistance of the young. Did Rubio perform last night?”

O’Dowed, rolled over revealing a shirtless Rubio, cherubic-faced and sucking his thumb. “Yes, Peggy,” she replied with a smile, and a sly flick of her tongue across her lips. “Twice.”

Republicans Join the Battle
After a shaky start, the convention hits its stride — by Peggy Noonan

Also/Too: Peggy Noonan’s WSJ Blog

Please also consult the definitive guide to Fear and Loathing in Tampa by Axel Grease

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was enjoying a leisurely Mai Tai (so cool, so refreshing) sitting in the first class cabin of the jumbo liner bound for Tampa, her ample calves stretching out before her as she wiggled her toes now freed from her comfy and well worn brouges.

She looked across the cabin at the various business people, and other notables who could afford to sit in luxury for multi-hour flight to the GOP Convention. A few pundits were sprinkled here and there, and she knew that sooner or later they would talk about politics, “a hazard of the profession,” she said to herself.

In 1980, Noonan recalled, she flew in coach to Detroit, of all places, to watch Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, accept the nomination. Later that night so many years ago, she remembered with a sense of pride hearing her one true love perform a speech that she had written, a speech that cemented her destiny and her love for Ronnie. Her little bird-like hands fluttered up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself.

“So young,” she smiled, “I was so young then. I couldn’t afford first class passage, and I had not earned by wings yet.” Noonan laughed at her little joke, and took a refreshing sip of her Mai Tai.

In 1984 the flight to the Dallas Convention, Noonan had flown in Air Force 1, and then recalled the general unpleasantness in 1981 with the unionized thugs from the Air Traffic Controllers. “Of course now, no one recalls that, and flying is just as safe if not safer thanks to the TSA,” Noonan noted how as a VIP and Frequent Flier she did not have to go through the long lines and intrusive scanning devices. “First class has its privileges,” she smiled.

“Peggy, I’m so glad to see you,” Mark Halperin said as he extended his hand. He leaned in and in a conspiratorial tone said, sotto voce, “No one invited Dubya or Cheney to attend! Can you believe it? Our last elected Republicans and no one invited them!” He then added, “Heard any good gossip about the convention?”

Noonan whispered back, “The speech Joe Biden is working on, to be given in the heart of downtown, just across from the convention site, will be stirring and stentorian: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Tampa, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Tampon.’”

They both laughed heartily, and Halperin moved on down the aisle. “I wish that were mine,” Noonan thought. “It came in the mail from a Hollywood screenwriter, one of the gifted conservatives who quietly toil there,” she grimaced to herself.

Noonan spotted the flying waiter and smiled her Sphinx-like smile, slow, smug, assured as she signaled him to bring her some more refreshment, and looked out the window only to see a lurid Gremlin sitting comfortably on the wing, feet dangling over the edge. He was distractedly playing with a flap, raising and lowering it.

“No, that was a Twilight Zone episode,” she murmured to herself. She brought her beverage to her lips and rubbed her eyes and looked again. The Gremlin smiled at her and raised an invisible cocktail glass and nodded his head in her direction. “A toast,” she muttered to herself, “the wretched fiend is toasting me.”

George Will, in his impeccable white linen trousers and sporty blue coat with brass buttons, stopped by. “Good to see you Peggy. Are you excited for the convention?”

“The big broadcast networks plan to give the Republicans (and the Democrats) only one hour a night of TV coverage,” Noonan whispered to Will. “They used to give all night, long as it took, and treat the proceedings with respect. What they give now, to the people of a great democracy fighting for its economic life in an uncertain world, is . . . an hour a night? For a national political convention?” She looked up at Will, pleading.

“This is a scandal. Mock them for it,” she ordered Will, who recoiled at the raw tone in her voice. “This isn’t Edward R. Murrow in charge of the news, it’s Gordon Gekko in charge of programming,” she snarled at Will, who was taken aback by the outburst.

“I’m thrilled,” she said her tone returning to normal. Noonan kept starring out the window. Will huffed and accepted the snub reply for what it was and briskly marched to his seat. The Gremlin winked at her and gave her a toothy grin.

“A penny for your thoughts, Nooner!” bellowed Chris Christie as he lumbered, bear-like, towards her.

“I find myself thinking of Alan Shepard,” Noonan muttered at him. “It’s May 5, 1961, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and everyone’s fussing. This monitor’s blinking and that one’s beeping and Shepard is up there, at the top of a Redstone rocket, in a tiny little capsule called Friendship 7. Mission Control is hemming and hawing: Should we stay or should we go? Finally Shepard says: “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”

“Hey, I like that, I’m going to add that to my speech this week!, Christie barked at her.” Christie then stood up straight, grabbed his crotch and bellowed “Hey baby, Come on and light this candle!”

Laughing, he stomped down the aisle to his row.

Noonan starred, transfixed as the Flight Attendant brought her refreshment. She downed it in one gulp and asked for another.

“Are you afraid of flying,” he asked considerately? “Would you like me to keep an eye on you to make sure you are all right?

“I’m fine, thanks,” Noonan said as the Gremlin was leering at her and doing some sort of vulgar dance on the wing, swinging implements around, yanking at bits of the wing. “But I would like another,” she pleaded. The attendant left.

“Well, Nooner, looks like they poured you into the plane just fine,” shrieked Nancy Reagan, sitting down next to Peggy. “Hey, remember the time we both joined the Mile-High…” Noonan cut her off.

“I’m working now, Nancy, I need to concentrate,” Noonan declared opening her laptop for the first time during the trip just as the flight attendant put down another cocktail. Nancy looked at him, winked at Noonan, and then smiled her shy puppy-dog smile and asked him if he could help her to return to her seat. Noonan watched them saunter down the aisle until she saw Reagan’s little claw the goose the poor boy.

The Gremlin was now doing something with the wing, something that looked like he was humping it. Noonan knew that if she told anyone that she was seeing Gremlins on the wings that they would have her committed, that was the way it worked in the show, so she kept pretending not to see anything, until the fiend actually tapped on her window and appeared to be mooning her, or at least she could see his butt crack. “This will not do,” she yelled to no one in particular as the plane went quiet.

“Good Lord,” she screamed to the entire cabin, “There’s a Gremlin outside my window and he’s doing something unspeakably vile to the plane!” She paused for breath, “We’re all going to die!”

The flight attendant, freed from the tender embrace of Nancy Reagan, returned to Noonan’s seat and stage whispered, “I’m going to have to cut you off now, you’ve had too many drinks and you are frightening the other passengers.”

“But don’t you see it,” she shrieked, “He’s right outside my window, and he looks like George Bush!”

“Miss, uh, Noonan,” he said looking her up on the manifest as he escorted her off the plane, “We have not left Kennedy yet. That’s one of our maintenance workers.”

America Meets Mr. Romney
Anticipating the highlights of the GOP’s Tampa convention by Peggy Noonan

Bonus: We have operatives everywhere who caught some of this journey on their cell phone cameras:

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was deep in sleep, the kind of sleep that only opium fiends and Mai Tai aficionados understand, the words of Coleridge wafting through the heady air inside her thirsty head:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

“It must be a dream,” Noonan snored, “I wonder where Ronnie is?”

It was true: every night at some point Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, made an appearance in her dreams. One of her little bird-like hands flitted up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a present from the great man himself; the other hand snaked it’s way considerably south.

“Oh, Ronnie,” Noonan muttered in her sleep, “show me the way to make sense of this Romney nightmare.” Tossing and turning, writhing, everything swirled around…

The next dream began to swirl about Noonan’s noggin. There’s a woman on a porch in eastern Ohio, maybe Diane Sawyer, and she has a dog, maybe Lassie, and she likes guns and supports the NRA and sees herself as more or less conservative. She assumed she’d vote for Romney and not the Kenyan Usurper in the White House, sitting in Ronnie’s chair.

But Sawyer’s hearing about Ryan and she’s hearing the word “cuts.” She knows spending is out of control and she’s worried about deficits and debt. But she’s on disability and her husband’s illness is being handled by Medicare, and she’s wondering: “Do these guys really understand my life? Do they know how it is for us?” She’s getting concerned, and not only for herself but her neighbors and friends. People are not just protective of themselves, they’re loyal to others.

Ryan’s zombie eyes appear and his jagged and point teeth, dripping blood as he smiles at the lady, and wielding scissors he cuts away at her porch and laughs as it falls away in pieces, her screams and wails that she wants to preserve the safety net for her children and grandchildren and for the ladies at the church who have been raising children on survivor benefits. He laughs harder and takes a step towards her!

“No, no, no,” Noonan wailed, “that’s not it. Zzzzzz…”

Noonan rolled onto her ample backside and let out a fart that scared the cat, and a new dream-like image filled the void. Some woman –Cokie Roberts?–appeared out of the mist: “My name is Kate, I receive the Social Security I earned, and my husband receives the veteran’s benefits he earned. In these hard times we rely on them to live. We would never trust things to someone who didn’t have our interests at heart.”

Kate continued, dreamlike. “That Paul Ryan let all the GM factories in his district close because Unions didn’t fit his Ayn Randian model of how the world should work, and now he’s coming to privatize our Social Security and eliminate Medicare for our children and grandchildren. He’s a monster!” Noonan, thrashed about more, “Monster, monster, monster…”

Noonan could feel herself frowning in her sleep. “Ryan is a monster, monster, monster, she muttered. Must make monster a hero… how, how?” her fevered dreams swirled about some more, turning, jumping…

Suddenly an old lady in a wheel chair appeared, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Nancy Reagan, Noonan’s arch-nemesis for Ronnie’s affections. Noonan grimaced and gave the old broad a powerful shove towards a cliff with jagged rocks below and a crashing, thundering sea! Noonan watched as the wheelchair picked up speed, so fast, rocketing downhill and hurtling to Nancy’s certain doom! “Save, me,” squealed Nancy. Noonan’s moonlike face, so round, so benevolent smiled beatifically.

Suddenly, Paul Ryan springs forward, puts his body between the wheelchair and the edge, and stops it. The old hag looks up at him, smiles, touches his face with her hand. He smiles, turns the chair around and begins to push her back to safety.

“You MONSTER,” Noonan screamed sitting bolt-upright in bed.

“So close, so close, so close.” Noonan took a swig from her sleeping medicine and settled back down, hoping to recapture her dream.

It’s the Circumstances, Stupid
How the Republican ticket can suit the moment and use Clark Kent—er, Paul Ryan. By Peggy Noonan

(Hat tip: Scissorhead Wagonjak)

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan waited until the usher was busy chastising some kids for contraband sweets before sneaking into the movie theater. “One of the great joys of summer,” Noonan snickered to herself.

The theater was dark and cool, a comfort compared to the sticky Manhattan weather, and Noonan waddled over to some empty seats and plopped down into the bucket of popcorn someone had thoughtfully left behind. She picked up the bucket and moved to a different row. “God provides,” she murmured as she noshed on the popcorn. Noonan spiked her Coke from her First Aid Kit (the clever name she gave her Christofle flask, so chic, so sterling), kicked off her brogues and put her feet up on the seat infront of her, and settled in to watch The Dark Knight Rises on Manhattan’s East 86th Street.

Grimly, Noonan noted that three cops were posted outside, two in a cruiser and one on a motorcycle and that people in the theater were jumpy, getting up and going out the exit, coming back.

Noonan sipped her Cuba Libra (so sweet, so satisfying in the beastly heat of a New York summer), munched some popcorn (with real butter!, and she reached around to feel the stain spreading on her ass from when she had sat on the popcorn and made a mental note to send her slacks to the laundry later) and pondered the obvious question: Did The Dark Knight Rises cause the Aurora shootings? “No, of course not,” she whispered to herself. “One movie doesn’t have that kind of power, and we don’t even know if the shooter had seen it.”

“Shhh!,” one of Noonan’s seat mates admonished her. Noonan looked admonished and continued to ponder the Big Questions to herself.

“The unstable are not entertained by darkness. They let it in.”

“Consider The Joker,” Noonan thought. Recalling Nicholson’s Joker from 1989 (‘the one who looked like Laura Bush,” she snickered) was cartoonish and laughable. And then she thought about Heath Ledger’s 2008 Joker who destabilized the gifted actor who played him such that he died of an overdose six months before the movie opened. “Amateur,” she laughed to herself.

“Hollywood,” she muttered into the popcorn bucket, “makes a lot of comedies, so why don’t we see the country break out laughing?” She took a thoughtful sip of Cuba Libra. “Violence is different,” Noonan replied to herself, because there are unstable people among us, and they are less defended against dark cultural messages.”

“You can go to a horror movie and be entertained or amused: “This is scary, I love getting scared, and I love it because I know it isn’t real,” Noonan muttered. “But the unstable are not entertained by darkness. They let it in.”

“Lady, shut up already,” her interlocutor stage whispered at her.

“Political pressure has never worked,” Noonan replied to her. “Politicians have been burned, and people who’ve started organizations have been spoofed and spurned as Puritans.”

“Lady, we’re trying to watch a movie, here!” her seat mate shouted at her.

Noonan shrieked back: “If some dumb Republican congressman had a hearing to grill some filmmakers, it would look like the McCarthy hearings. There would be speeches about artistic freedom, and someone would have clever words about how Shakespeare, too, used violence.”

Noonan blinked in the bright light as the usher ejected her from the theater, butter-stained ass over heels, popcorn in her hair onto the hot sidewalk of Manhattan’s East 86th Street. “Have you ever seen ‘Coriolanus?’,” she yelled at him from the gum-flecked concrete.

“Look, Mommy,” squealed a tot of about 8. “It’s the Joker!”

The Dark Night Rises
Everybody knows the culture is poisonous, and nobody expects that to change — By Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was preparing to step up to the mike at the Karaoke stage of her new favorite watering hole, The Chelsea Pier, where she had once met a six-foot tall Nancy Reagan impersonator (“complete with a 5 o’clock shadow, just like the real one” she snickered).

Noonan’s hands automatically fluttered up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself, certainly the greatest president of the last half of the last century, perhaps the greatest president ever.

It had been a great week for the current occupant of Ronnie’s office, Noonan scowled. “But a great week does not a great president make,” she muttered to one of the other performers. “ObamaCare, including the insurance mandate, was upheld. What would have been a political disaster for President Obama has been averted.” She sipped thoughtfully on her Mai Tai, so refreshing, so sweet.

“He has not been humiliated, and the centerpiece of his efforts the past 3½ years has not been rebuked by the Supreme Court,” she muttered to herself.

Noonan paused. “The ruling strikes me as very bad for the atmosphere of freedom in our country,” she hiccuped.

Noonan grabbed the man who had just concluded the Lonely Goatherd, and demanded of him, ” do you sense the freeness and lazy, sloppy liberty we’ve long maintained with some hiccups along the way?” There was an awkward pause. “Well, do you?” The lonely goatherd backed away.

“For the first time in months, the president looks like he’s on the Uppalator, not the Downalator,” she shouted at the goatherd, who was now sprinting for the door. She signaled Juan-Carlos, her favorite bar tender in her accustomed manner: by waving a Benjamin over her head. She practiced her song, just to herself, humming the melody, and soon another Mai Tai arrived.

Noonan quaffed, and sat back on her heels, and continued her thoughts. “That man, that horrid little man, so likable, so serious, sitting in Ronnie’s chair, stressed what he said were the program’s benefits.” Noonan counted them off on her fingers:

1. “Those already insured will find their coverage “more secure and more affordable,”
2. “Insurance companies will provide free preventive care like checkups and mammograms,”
3. “Seniors” and young adults will receive benefits,”
4. “Those with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied coverage”
5. “Insurance companies won’t be able to charge you more just because you’re a woman.”

“It was a targeted base-greaser,” she sneered. She knew in her heart that Ronnie, so tall, so handsome, would never do anything so calculated and base as to try to please his base. “Ronnie,” Noonan muttered, “was a real man and wouldn’t care for that kind of thing. He would not have cared about coverage or pre-existing conditions.”

The loudspeaker crackled to life. “And now, without further a-do, The Chelsea Pier wants you to give it up for Miss Peggy Noonan!”

Noonan languidly rode a crest of self-confidence as she ascended to the stage, swan-like, grace on water, in spite of her ample calves and tendency to stomp, and picked up the microphone and began her song.

Feelings
Nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my
Feelings of love…
Feelings,
Wo-o-o feelings
Wo-o-o feelings

Obama Has a Good Day
But liberty has a bad one — by Peggy Noonan

One assumes that when they film these things that the producers prep the pundits slightly by telling them the topics that they will be covering, so they can get their thoughts in order, which generally is not a big deal to the well-oiled pundit machines that can spit out on opinion at a moment’s notice.

It should be noted that Peggington’s oil is not measured in viscosity, but in proofage. One must take delight where’re one finds it in these days of strife and toil, and Noonan blacking out on national TeeVee gives me that Tweety-like thrill up the leg.

Too/Also: we (meaning me, I guess) take a fair amount of crap for not rising above the fray and not taking on a more dignified and less spit-balling approach to breaking-down Noonan’s oeuvre, but spitballing is our stock-in-trade here at Mock, Paper, Scissors, and really, after this clip, can you blame us? We’ve been right on target with Noonan since the beginning of this blog, with our little pastiches and imagined vignettes of how she writes her column.

Update: Thank you, Driftglass!

(Crooks and Liars)

Anatomy of a Column

ne Carte, s’il-vous plaît,” Peggy Noonan said as the suave man in the dinner jacket sat down at the Baccarat table opposite her at Shel Addison’s Casino. Noonan tried to keep her cool as the man bore a remarkable resemblance to her beloved Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, perhaps the greatest president ever.

“Sept à la banco,” the croupier said. Noonan smiled her Sphinx-like smile.

“Carte,” Noonan declared. The Croupier dealt her another carte. She turned over her hand, face up. An 8 of Diamonds and a Jack of Clubs, and raked in her winnings.

“Suivi,” Noonan said. “The house will cover you?” Noonan asked the Croupier.

“Oui Madame.” The croupier passed le shoe des cartes to the mysterious and stranger. “Monsieur, chargez-bien!”

The handsome stranger, who dealt une carte to himself–now le Banco–tucked it under the shoe, and une autre carte to Noonan, and then another carte to the shoe.

“Carte,” Noonan declared again. He flipped over his hand: King of Spades and the 9 of Hearts.

“I need another thousand,” Noonan said as she wrote a check to the Casino.

“I admire your courage Miss, uhh” the stranger said to Noonan.

“Noonan. Peggy Noonan,” she replied. “I admire your luck, Mister…uh?

“Romney. Willard Romney. I prefer my juice boxes shaken, not stirred.”

Noonan woke up with a start from her strange dream, slightly sweaty glowing buckets and bewildered she noticed that yet again she managed to have her Lanz of Salisbury nightgown on backwards. “How did that happen?,” she wondered.

She looked around her penthouse (the Aviary 2, so spacious, so luxurious) and noticed that the old black and white Philco television was showing a test pattern. “Faithful, and reliable technology,” Noonan noted with smug satisfaction.

“Dreaming about Mitt as James Bond could be worse,” Noonan muttered to herself, “at least it was dignified gambling and not horse racing. “Mr. Romney is looking good, as are his crowds,” she said to a potted plant nearby. “When the camera shows people in the stands behind him as he speaks, they no longer look as if they walked in off the street or put a bet on a horse and are straining to see if it breaks from the pack. Now they look like people watching their horse take the lead, with no one coming up the outside.”

Noonan stumbled into the kitchen and saw that her loyal maid Conseula had laid out the essentials for mixing her breakfast, and just moments later she poured herself onto the terrace overlooking Central Park enjoying the sunlight and a refreshing Mai Tai, so sweet. A few pigeons fluttered about cooing and strutting. She thought again about her dream where Mitt screwed up perhaps the most famous line in all of cinema.

“Mr. Romney has a tendency to litter his speeches with applause lines,” Noonan the once-professional speech writer muttered to herself. “They come one after another. It’s old-fashioned, and it’s based on the idea that that’s all TV wants, five seconds of a line and two seconds of applause.” Noonan took a thoughtful sip and continued on musing.

“You know what Republicans on the ground think when they look at Mitt Romney?,” she asked a pigeon that fluttered next to her. “Please don’t blow it,” she giggled as the bird flew away. “They think President Obama can’t win but Mr. Romney can still lose. So they’re feeling burly but anxious, hopeful yet spooked.”

“Applause-line speeches are not right for a time of crisis, because they do not allow for the development of a thought, a point of view, an insight,” she swigged back her now-empty glass, smacked her lips and chewed thoughtfully on the pineapple wedge.

“Campaign professionals like applause lines in part because they think that’s all a campaign speech is, a vehicle for a picture of people clapping,” she muttered to the birds and then realized she had just said five minutes ago that she liked the image of his audience standing behind him smiling. “They don’t care about meaning, they care about impression. But in the end, the impression is bad: distracted candidate barking lines, robotic audience clapping.” The birds looked confusedly at Noonan. “Er, well,” she muttered looking away.

“But people like to listen if you’re saying something interesting,” Noonan declared feeling herself wake up to her topic. The pigeons seemed to be smiling back at her, approving of how she saved herself from self-parody.

“As for the president,” Noonan hated calling this man sitting in Ronnie’s chair the president, but she carried on anyway, “his big campaign speech last week in Cleveland not only was roundly panned but was deeply revealing, ” Noonan grimaced recalling it. Cleveland, of all places! The birds all cooed sympathetically with her outrage.

“I listened once and read it twice: It wasn’t a case for re election, it was a wordage dump,” and not, she thought, like one of her own columns.

Once More, With Meaning
Romney can win, but he needs more than applause lines — by Peggy Noonan

Media Matters read the column, too.

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was splayed out, face-down, at peace with the floor of her office when the phone rang at the crack of eleven AM, and caused her to open one bleary, bloodshot eye. Wondering where the phone was, she searched about frantically in case it was her employer, Rupert Murdoch.

Noonan ascertained that the phone was hidden under the sombrero of a mariachi player who was snoring peacefully nearby.

“Guuuud m’ing. Meep, be…” Noonan said to the sombrero and then grabbed the phone, cleared her throat and tried again. “Good Morning, this is Peggy.”

“Nooner,” screeched her old nemesis Nancy Reagan, “are you in or out? I have secured a quart of cat piss and some water balloons and I know where Don Regan is having lunch today, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna get that motherf…” Noonan cut Nancy off.

“Nancy, I’m at work now, you know how Rupert likes to listen in on calls, call me at home tonight and let me know how it goes.” Noonan rang off, but not in time.

“G’day, Peggs,” Rupert’s voice boomed over the disconnected intercom. “Quite a boozer you had going on last night. Iced to the eyebrows. You gonna write you column on the 40th Anniversary of Watergate? Due today. Don’t be late. Sounds like the old bat’s gonna have a jolly, what? Let me know how it goes.”

The intercom went dead. “Some day,” Noonan thought to herself, “I must learn how he does that.” She steadied herself, hung up the phone, and returned the sombrero to the snoring mariachi player. “The trumpet player,” she snickered. “Blow, Gabriel, blow.”

“Watergate of course was the mother of all leaks,” Noonan mused to herself as she mixed herself an eye opener from the impromptu bar that was somehow in her office. “A culture of secrecy always finds a leak,” she thought as she took a long, deep quaff of refreshment. She stood up on her tiptoes, stretching her ample calves, and gave Ronnie a little kiss on his card board cheek, one little birdlike hand fluttered up to the pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself. “Thank God that we had no scandals in our Administration,” she whispered to the cardboard cutout of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever.

“Unlike the current occupant of the oval office,” she grimaced. “What is happening with all these breaches of our national security? Why are intelligence professionals talking so much-divulging secret and sensitive information for all the world to see, and for our adversaries to contemplate?”

Noonan took a contemplative swig of Mai Tai, so sweet, so refreshing, and continued outlining her thoughts.

“What are they thinking? That in the age of Wikileaks the White House itself should be one big Wikileak?,” Noonan thought to herself as she mixed another Mai Tai.

The sombrero rang again. She answered it.

“Peggy, hi it’s me, Cokie, and you’ll never guess what just happened at Le Circ!”

Noonan grinned as the denouement of Donald Regan was reported. “Three balloons, Peggy, can you believe it, three balloons right on the kisser, and it smelled just dreadful. Oh, gotta go, George Will’s on the other line. Wait till he hears about this! Remember, don’t tell anyone Nancy finally got him!”

“Where was I?,” Noonan mumbled to herself. “Why is this happening? In part because at our highest level in politics, government and journalism, Americans continue to act as if we are talking only to ourselves. There is something narcissistic in this: Only our dialogue counts, no one else is listening, and what can they do about it if they are? There is something childish in it: Knowing secrets is cool, and telling them is cooler.” Noonan took a thoughtful bite out of the pineapple wedge, and slurped the juice as it tricked down her chin.

The phone rang again, and Noonan picked up the sombrero, put it down and picked up the phone.

“Peggy, as I live and breath, I finally got through to you! You’ll never guess who this is!”

Noonan felt her stomach flip-flop. “Colonel North, I told you to never talk to me again.”

Who Benefits From the ‘Avalanche of Leaks’?
They seem designed to glorify President Obama and help his re-election, by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan awoke with a start and discovered to her chagrin that she was in a multiplex theater of some sort, about to watch a debased entertainment of some sort, and in her hand was a waxy cup containing an icy drink of some sort.

“Oh no,” Noonan murmured to herself, “I’m not at that dreadful Palin movie again, am I?” A quick look around the nearly empty theater afforded her no succor. When she saw the Palin biopic, the theater was just as empty. She reached into her Channel bag (so supple, so chic) and poured the contents of her First Aid Kit (the clever name she had given her Christofle flask–so comforting, so chic) into the Coke. “Liberate me, Cuba,” she said to no one in particular, as she swigged a giant sip.

The screen flickered to life and the usual previews and admonitions played out, and then someone who bore a remarkable resemblance to Margaret Thatcher appeared on the screen. “Maggie, Maggie,” Noonan muttered. “Where’s Ronnie?,” she sighed.

“The left in America has largely thrown in the towel on Ronald Reagan, but in Britain Thatcher-hatred remains fresh. Why?,” Noonan queried the twelve-foot Thatcher, who for some reason did not reply.

“Because she was a woman,” Noonan replied to the screen. “Because women in politics are always by definition seen as presumptuous: They presume to lead men.”

Margaret Thatcher carried on, and paid no attention to Noonan.

Standing up, rather wobbly, Noonan shrieked at Thatcher, “David Lean wouldn’t be allowed to make movies today, John Ford would be forced to turn John Wayne into a 30-something failure-to-launch hipster whose big moment is missing the toilet in the vomit scene in Hangover Ten!”

The theater attendant escorted Noonan out of the complex.

“Our movie culture has descended into immaturity, deep and inhuman violence, a pervasive and flattened sexuality. It is an embarrassment,” she shouted at the perplexed teen.

“Well,” he replied to Noonan, as he put her into a waiting cab, “It’s not Bedtime for Bonzo.”

Oh Wow! Some highlights of 2011, by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan stepped up to the open mic at The Chelsea Pier to tell her joke, cunning and short and cute. She had just heard it that morning as she was being frisked at her favorite Airport, her favorite because it was named after the greatest president of the last half of the last century, perhaps the greatest president ever, Ronald Wilson Reagan:

“Ten years ago, Steve Jobs was alive, Bob Hope was alive, and Johnny Cash was alive. Now we are out of jobs, out of hope and out of cash.”

Crickets, as they say.

Back at the bar, she asked her favorite barkeep Juan-Carlos what had gone wrong. “The TSA man’s joke was as good a summation of the current moment and the public mood as I’ve heard,” she said thoughtfully as she polished off a refreshing Mai Tai, and proceeded to enjoy the pineapple wedge, so sticky, so sweet. The prize for the best joke tonight is to have your drinks tab on the house. Noonan was determined to win.

“Maybe it was the way he said it?” JC replied. Juan Carlos liked to be called JC. The other, less handsome barkeeps often bitched that “the other JC only thinks he’s the son of God.” Noonan felt uncomfortable addressing him as her Savior, though admittedly she would gladly have communion with him. “Eat for this is my body,” she murmured to herself.

Noonan considered delivery as a possibility as she enjoyed a new Mai Tai.

The television bolted to the ceiling was showing in the ticker that the president’s jobs bill had failed. Noonan smiled slyly. “It’s not that it lost, it’s that nobody noticed,” she said with smug satisfaction taking a long pull on the short straw. “It failed because he was for it.”

Noonan tried that line on JC. “No ma’am, that’s not funny either.” Noonan grimaced.

Noonan remembered that Ronnie had once told her that being President was hard, but comedy was harder. They both laughed over that line. Her hand fluttered up to her ever-present pearls, a present from the great man himself.

“Juan-Carlos, do you know who looks most surprised by the rise of Herman Cain? Herman Cain!”

JC shook his head back at her, and continued to polish empty glasses. Noonan took a thoughtful sip of Mai Tai. “Well, ” she muttered to herself, “Mr. Cain’s strength is not his charm.”

Juan-Carlos was not even pretending to listen any longer. Noonan wondered why she continued to tip him if wasn’t going to listen to her. Then he bent over to pick up something on the floor and she remembered why she tipped him. She dropped another napkin on the floor and sighed.

“Jon Huntsman is not actually a blue-blood, patrician Rockefeller Republican, he just plays one on TV!”

JC brought her a fresh Mai Tai without her even asking. She smiled and gratefully slurped. “Ah, nectar!”

“People say that Chris Christie’s endorsement of Mitt is a huge boon!” JC smiled at her and shook his head “No” again.

“The first joke was the best one, Miss Noonan, give it another try.” He indicated that the open mic line was empty. “Just say it like the man said it to you. It’s in the delivery, I guess.”

Taking a gulp of liquid courage, Noonan waddled to the stage again, and stomped up the rickety steps, her ample calves stretching and contracting on each riser.

“Ten years ago, Steve Jobs be alive, Bob Hope be alive, Johnny Cash be alive. Now we outta jobs, outta hope an’ outta cash.”

This Is No Time for Moderation
America can’t trim and tweak its way back to economic dynamism — by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan picked up the princess phone in her boudoir at The Aviary 2 (her expansive new upper Eastside penthouse, so chic) to make a phone call and said to the dial tone, “Well Rupert, are you coming to my party in the Hamptons or are you not?”

The dial tone crackled away. “Crikey, Peg, you bluey, you take all the joy outta me lark. I’d be drongo to miss it. Can I bring a slab of VB and me relos? Enough ear basher,” and he rang off.

“The guest list,” Noonan muttered to herself, “is now complete.” She ran through her check list: catering, cater-waiters, bartenders, pool boys. With a satisfied smacking of her lips, she polished off her elevenses and rang the doorman to have her car brought around.

Noonan answered the door herself as the guests arrived–it is the little touches that always make a party, she thought to herself as she smoothed out the muumuu with matching bikini she had bought at Bergdorf and offered her guests a refreshing Mai Tai and pointed them to the pool out back.

“Oh, Peggy,” giggled Lindsey Graham, “you’ve out done yourself.” He took a fresh beverage from the waiter. “I simply adore the Pacific Rim,” and with that Senator Graham disappeared with the handsome Japanese waiter to the pool house.

“I simply adore the Pacific Rim,” and with that Senator Graham disappeared with the handsome Japanese waiter to the pool house.

Noonan grimaced a little when Rick Santorum handed her a jar prominently labeled Santorum Jelly. “We brought 40 of them to Iowa and returned with 38. Karen thought you might like some.”

“Too kind, too kind,” Noonan murmured accepting the jar. “Sarah and Bristol are out by the pool telling the most amusing story,” Noonan whispered conspiratorially, “about the Other Rick at the Governors’ sleep-over party in 2008.” Santorum made a beeline for Palin and Noonan chucked the jar over the neighbor’s fence. “Take that, Martha!”

“Summer vacations are treacherous things for politicians,” Noonan noted, “spend too much time clearing brush and you are labelled a dilettante. Spend too much time on the vineyard, and like Clinton, you are labelled as out of touch.” But, she murmured to herself, “even Ronnie, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, even Ronald Wilson Reagan took a break now and then to ride his horse in Santa Barbara. Let me be clear, I’m not talking about Nancy.” George Will chuckled at her joke.

Just then Chris Christie ran naked through the crowd. “Cannonball,” he shrieked as he leapt into the deep end of the pool.

Just then Chris Christie ran naked through the crowd. “Cannonball,” he shrieked as he leapt into the deep end of the pool.

“I haven’t seen a splash like that since The Poisiden Adventure,” snarled a drenched Michelle Malkin. “What are you starring at, Coulter? Not getting in the water? Afraid you’ll dissolve?”

Coulter glared at Malkin, her Adam’s apple visibly trembling in her long, swan-like neck, as if she might suddenly cry.

“You stupid dick,” Malkin yelled, “Hormone replacement therapy does not give you a period.”

“Everyone is having a much better time here, at my party, my simple summer pool party than Barack Obama is having now in Martha’s Vineyard,” Noonan explained to a flower arrangement. “He’s been hearing unwanted advice–”Don’t go to Martha’s Vineyard!” his advisors must be saying to him.” Noonan paused to take a thoughtful sip of her Mai Tai.

“How could Obama not be depressed?” Noonan pondered as she nibbled on the sweet, refreshingly sweet, actually, Pineapple wedge garnishing her drink.

“He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He’s got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do,” Noonan continued.

“His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust,” she said to the card board cut out of Ronnie that she brought in from Manhattan. Her little hands fluttered up to the pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself, and her most prized possession.

“He thought they’d love him for health care,” she muttered to the blender jar that was whizzing up a replacement Mai Tai, “that it was a down payment on greatness. But the left sees it as a sellout, the center as a vaguely threatening mess, the right as a rallying cry.”

Noonan reached over to take a whack at a croquet ball. “He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn’t.”

Noonan continued, talking to an inflatable alligator raft. “He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with Recovery Summer. There wasn’t.”

“He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation,” Noonan frantically said to the Weber Grill. “The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach.” Noonan stepped on her muumuu and catapalted head-first into a bed of petunias.

“And they think that I’m crazy,” a stone cold sober Michele Bachmann said to her invisible friend near the ice chest.

The President’s Island Retreat
Is his visit to Martha’s Vineyard a sign that he’s giving up? — By Peggy Noonan

But Wait! There’s More!

Our intrepid spy and photo journalist DCap was there, and he took these exclusive pictures of the soirée chez Noonington:

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan lifted her head up off the desk at the Aviary 2, the clever name she gave to her new Penthouse in the sky (so expansive, so chic), paperclips and sticky notes adhered to her face, to see who was calling her at this ungodly hour of the morning. She hadn’t had her elevenses yet, and last night’s pineapple wedge was fetid and smashed into the carpeting around her thick ankles.

The phone displayed a picture of George Will in his navy whites playing with his fleet of remote-controlled boats re-enacting the battle of Trafalgar in his backyard pool.

Picking up the phone, she put on her best professional voice, “Admiral, good to hear from you,” but it came out “Ad marble gooby daf beer doo!”

“Jesus Peggy, I thought I’d get you before you uncorked you lunch.”

“I’m as sober as a judge, George.”

“Bork! Bork! Bork!” they both barked at each other laughing. “What can I do for you, George?”

“Peggy, have you seen Obama’s speech yet? They released it already. He profanes the good name of Ronald Reagan. As the keepers of the Reagan Legacy, we need to act!”

Noonan always giggled at the way Will inserted himself in the sacred trust. Peggy wrote the speeches, Will only played Jimmy Carter in the practice debates. Hardly the same. Her perfectly manicured hands fluttered up to the pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself, perhaps the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever.

“What do you have in mind, George?”

“We need to co-ordinate our attack in our columns this week!” he blurted. “If we both go after Obama’s speechifying from the position that he is no Reagan–and only we two can do this–we can take him down a notch or two before he hypnotizes the lemmings with his devilish oratorical powers!”

“Bloody hell!” Rupert Murdoch’s voice crackled into the phone, “Peg, that’s a fair dinky bonzer! Will, you dunny rat, fair suck of the sav, eh!”

“What the…” Will shouted into the phone.

“Pay not attention, George, Rupie retains the right to listen in on his employees now and again.” And then added, “Think of it as helping him as he has withdrawals from the recent unpleasantness in the UK.”

“Just looking for good oil, mate.”

Will hung up.

Dodgy bloke, eh Peg? His idea cracked me fat. Anyway, it’s a ripper. Jump on it, and don’t hit the turps.

“Dodgy bloke, eh Peg? His idea cracked me fat. Anyway, it’s a ripper. Jump on it, and don’t hit the turps.” and he crackled off.

***

Noonan was seated at her stool (“Miss Peggy Noonan” was engraved on the brass plaque–her prize for so many wins at Karaoke night) at The Chelsea Pier’s long bar, hitting the turps as it were. A Mai Tai, so refreshing, so sweet was nearby, as was her notebook with scribbles of thoughts, bits of phrases. “Research,” she said to herself, “that’s the key ingredient of my columns and the secret of my cunning success.” She thoughtfully slurped on the pineapple wedge in her glass.

She kept one flinty eye peeled on the TV bolted to the wall above the bar currently playing selected scenes from Will and Grace. A large Callista Gingrich impersonator sat down next to her and yelled at the bartender, “Who does a gal have to blow around here to get a drink?”

Who does a gal have to blow around here to get a drink?

Noonan grimaced at the coarse language, but wrote it down anyway.

“I’m really looking forward to hearing our President speak, aren’t you? Obama always says the right things to reassure us, doesn’t he?”

“We have to “eat our peas.” Noonan replied dryly. She waived a Benjamin over her glass and told the barkeep to give the faux Callista a refresh of whatever it was that she was drinking.

“Well, he excites me anyway,” Callista continued. “His last speech thrilled me, what about you?” she asked sipping on her (free) drink. “Thanks for drink, hon.”

“He was boring in the way that people who are essentially ideological are always boring. They bleed any realness out of their arguments. They are immersed in abstractions that get reduced to platitudes, and so they never seem to be telling it straight. And he was a joy-free zone. No matter how much the president tries to smile, and he has a lovely smile, one is always aware of his grim task: income equality, redistribution, taxes. Come, let us suffer together…”

The faux Callista turned a false eyelash to Noonan. “Say, you’re somebody famous, aren’t you? I’m sure I’ve seen you on TV, right?”

Noonan smiled shyly, extended her hand–momentarily putting down her Mai Tai–and introduced herself, listing all the pundit shows–This Week, Morning Joe, etc.– her news paper column, magazines, her books, and of course mentioned that she was Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, “Morning in America,” and “Touching the Face of God.” Exhausted, she sat down in the warm glow of her celebrity.

“No, no, that’s not it. I know! You’re Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch right? You’re the one who got crabs from boinking some ex-mayor, right?”

The Power of Bad Ideas
What we’ve got here is far worse than a failure to communicate, by Peggy Noonan

But wait! There’s More!

Our good friend and Scissorhead Nonnie9999 from Hysterical Raisins presents us with this candid photo of the master grinding out a column. Thanks, Nonnie!

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan always picks up the phone when Rupert calls.

“G’day, Mate. Look it, Nooners…”

“Rupert, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It means something here, you know.” Lowering her voice she added, “something unsavory.”

“Don’t I know that,” he laughed into the phone, “I got the whole dossier on you and Jeff Greenfield. Lookit, don’t be a Mickey Mouse on me, I need you to be a good little jillaroo and teach the jumbucks. A few of them got ‘roos loose in the top paddock.”

Peggy sat down hard. Talking to her boss, the head of Newscorp always gave her a headache, and so she reached for her First Aid Kit, the clever name she had given her silver flask from Cristofel (so small, so chic), and pulled a good sip.

“Peggy, thing is some of the blokes don’t know Bourke Street from Christmas, so teach ‘em some journo. Think of it as summer camp.”

“Punditry 101,” Noonan clarified, “you want me to teach them to be pundits?”

“I know you are no conch, Nooner, so I’ll make it worth your while. Open tab at your favorite boozer. A buck’s night, if you like.”

Noonan’s ears pricked up.

***

Peggy Noonan opened a bleary eye and stared at the unwashed face of a child who was just staring at her.

“Consuela! Dammit, bring a pitcher of bloodies. I think I’m hallucinating again, there’s an urchin dans ma boudoir giving me the stink eye!”

Silence. And then she recalled the phone call with Rupert.

(more…)

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was at Donald Rumsfeld’s book launch party, and was challenged by the guest of honor to arm wrestle. The argument had been about known-knowns , known-unknowns, or some such thing, and the pugnacious Rumsfeld challenged her to an arm-wresting match to solve their differences. She handed her Mai Tai to Nancy Reagan, and told her to hold it. “I’ll be back,” she said to Nancy in her best Terminator voice.

“Asshole,” Nancy chirped to complete the quote, laughed, and pounded back the Mai Tai. “I prefer Zombies, Nooner, but I was married to one for fuckin’ forever.” The former first lady pinched the butt of the nearest waiter. “I gotta live one!,” and she disappeared into the crowd, chasing after the terrified young man.

“If only David Broder were still around,” Noonan murmured, “we’d settle this like adults, Rummy!”

“Golly, Gee, Peggy,” Rummy started, “do you think you should have given Nancy another drink?”

“Only if it had strychnine,” she replied, and they both burst out laughing. The old inner circle knew that Peggy would always love her Ronnie first, last, and always.

Bill Bennet watched the two of them start to arm wrestle and turned to George Schultz and bet that Noonan would win. “Benny,” hissed Rummy, “I thought you gave up gambling.”

“He’ll give up gambling when I give up the tiger on my ass,” quipped George.

“Heh, he said ass, Poppy,” chortled W.

“Wouldn’t be prudent to get it scrubbed off now,” laughed 41.

Noonan handily beat Rummy, and Babs ran over to her, screeching, “He’s deader that fetus in a jar!” and proceeded to give Noonan a flying chest bump.

And then things went black.

****

Peggy Noonan opened one bleary eye, heard a clattering sound, and murmured softly, “Rummy, just leave the shopping cart near the door; Conseula will see me in,” and she rolled over and snored, delicately…

Noonan noticed that the shopping cart she thought she was in was not a shopping cart at all, but instead was an airplane. “Oh, that Rummy, ” she cursed under her breath. “Always with the practical jokes.” She noted that the flight attendant was wearing cammo, and he was not bringing her refreshments, and that she was clearly not in first class. The announcement said something about Kabul. Noonan sat bolt upright in her seat in what was a Military Airlift Command C-130 cargo plane. The attendant confirmed her worst fears: they were going to land in Afghanistan.

“Miss Noonan, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you going to Afghanistan wearing a prom dress?”

“Because,” she declared, “it is the 9/11 place, the place that helped 9/11 to happen. America,” she continued, “cannot leave because, as the iconic Time cover had it, the Taliban will cut off women’s noses and brutalize them in other ways.”

You Can’t Go Home Again
Lesson from the front: It’s easier to start a war than to finish one, by Peggy Noonan

Courtesy of DCap

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was sipping her traditional Mai Tai (so refreshing, so sweet) at the bar at Chelsea’s Pier (her favorite new watering hole), when her arch-rival, the six-foot Nancy Reagan impersonator (“complete with 5 0′clock shadow, just like the real one”) rushed up to her, and breathlessly begged for a favor.

“Peggy, Condi Rice isn’t here, and I need a back-up go-go dancer for my act next hour.” The Condi Rice impersonator, allegedly a Jets’ linebacker and a brute with massive hands (“Just like the real Condi”) was always flaking out on his commitments. “I’ll buy you drinks for the rest of the evening.”

Noonan agreed to the terms. She knew from actual experience that in an hour’s time she could enjoy four rounds of thirst-quenching refreshment. “It’s the same number I enjoy during the State of the Union Address.”

Of course during happier times when Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, perhaps the greatest president ever, would give a riveting SOTU speech, one that she had written, he would get standing ovations. “Ronnie, dear Ronnie, he knew how to give a speech.”

Unlike that horrid, professorial man now sitting at her beloved Ronnie’s desk. “As a rule, when Mr. Obama speaks, he literally says too many words, and they’re not especially interesting words. They’re dull and bureaucratic or windy and vague, too round and soft to pierce and enter your brain,” she sniffed.

She knew from actual experience that in an hour’s time she could enjoy four rounds of thirst-quenching refreshment. “It’s the same number I enjoy during the State of the Union Address.”

“Every White House wants their guy to get more applause than the previous guy,” she peered into the rapidly emptying hurricane glass, and took a thoughtful sip of Mai Tai. “The great thing for the president is that expectations are low,” she snickered. “The sad thing,” she grimaced, is that there is no way to escape the SOTU.”

“TV and radio carry it live, and it’s hard for the average citizen to avoid seeing at least a piece of it,” she sniffed. Noonan was still scared by her last attempt to interact with an average citizen, and thus when she got the barkeep’s attention ordered another round, to sooth her jangling nerves.

***

Noonan was finishing her fourth round–as she predicted–when she was called to the stage. The MC announced that for the first time in the history of the Chelsea Piers that Nancy Reagan and Peggy Noonan were appearing jointly, and there was thunderous applause.

“Psst, Nancy. What song are we doing?,” Noonan inquired, while wobbling onto the stage.

Nancy turned to her and whispered “The Bitch is Back.”

How to Continue the Obama Upswing, by Peggy Noonan

Bonus!

We have photographic evidence that Noonington dances the Pony and knows the Frug!

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan, sitting at the chinoiserie writing desk (so chic, so Sotheby’s) enjoyed a refreshing sip of Mai Tai, picked up the quill and dipped it into the inkwell and began her annual Christmas Letter to home.

“Dear Family,” she began, “it’s been simply ages since we last spoke, and I’m positively aching to see you soon, soon, man-in-the-moon, but not too soon. Work finds me so busy I cannot possibly make it home this year.”

Noonan paused thoughtfully, “The first lie is always the hardest,” she muttered to herself, “but a professional who knows her craft carries on in the face of adversity, regardless.” She quaffed deeply from the hurricane glass. “It’s like making a deal with the Devil,” she though to herself, “much like what the President did this week.”

Noonan could not but help letting a sly grin escape, “He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn’t much left to lose! Which may explain Tuesday’s press conference.”

“The first lie is always the hardest,” she muttered to herself

The presser in which the President, that cold and unlikable man, basically called his opponents common thugs and his supporters sanctimonious, had puzzled Noonan. “Ronnie would have handled that better,” she murmured to herself. The Great Communicator, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, perhaps the greatest president ever, would never have insulted his base, and would never have burned the communication bridge to the other side. “Why should the GOP trust him ever again, name calling like that,” Noonan sputtered and reached for the pitcher of Mai Tai to replenish her glass.

“No,” thought Noonan, “that little man sitting at Ronnie’s desk, that strange professorial man, announced that he hates the deal he made, hates the people he made the deal with, and hates even more the people who’ll criticize it.” A quick sip of refreshment followed that thought.

“Amateur,” she giggled.

The truth, of course, is that all presidents are narcissists and egoists, they all hate that they need their supporters and they all hate the opposition, they have a singular vision of where they want to go and anyone standing in the way is unappreciated, unloved, unavoidably disappointed, everyone wants purity of spirit, of cause, noblesse oblige, and instead we get humans, failed and flawed.

“The president must have thought that distancing himself from left and right would make him more attractive to the center,” she mused as she looked out of the Aviary’s windows at the genteel scene of the upper east side. “The left wanted him to give them their own Morning in America, and instead he spanked them and sent them to bed without supper.”

Another thoughtful sip of her Mai Tai, so cool, so refreshing, and Noonan considered where this will lead, all of this disenchantment of the left, the confusion of the party’s professionals, has lead to increased talk of a primary challenger to Mr. Obama in 2012.

“Modern presidents are never challenged from their base,” Noonan sniffed, “always by the people who didn’t love them going in. You’re not supposed to get a serious primary challenge from the people who loved you. But that’s the talk of what may happen with Mr. Obama… but anyone who would challenge Mr. Obama from the left, would never, could never, win the 2012 general election. He’d lose badly and take the party with him.”

“Except for Hillary,” Noonan grinned.

Picking up the quill, and giving it a fresh drink of ink, and imperiously she continued the traditional Christmas newsletter.

“We hope this letter finds everyone in Brooklyn well…”

From Audacity to Animosity, by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan put the handset back in the cradle of her pink princess phone in the boudoir of the Aviary 2 (the upper east-side Penthouse she bought for nearly $2M in the spring, so spacious, so chic). She paused for a moment before reaching for her Mai Tai and sipping thoughtfully, wondered where she was going to meet some ordinary Americans.

Mr. Murdoch’s instructions had been undeniably clear: Noonan was to write about how out of touch the President is with something he called real Americans, as if this creature existed. “Fuck it, Peggy, I’m an Australian billionaire, what the fuck do I know about your fucking little people? Obama went to goddam Indiana, so find some goddam Indians that want to talk about how much they fucking hate him.”

Noonan had tried to explain the dynamics to the Boss: “When you’re president and you go to Indiana, you take the bubble with you. Your bubble meets Indiana; your bubble witnesses Indianans. But you don’t get out of the bubble in Indiana.”

“Do I have to fucking do everything here?” was the reply before he slammed the phone on her. It was now a few Mai Tais later, and Noonan had a plan. “If you can’t take Mohammed to the Mountain, you can take some Mai Tai to Mohammed,” she noted. She was going to go to middle america and find out what they think of the President, as the boss suggested.

If you can’t take Mohammed to the Mountain, you can take some Mai Tai to Mohammed.

Calling her building’s concierge, Noonan arranged to have her driver meet her out in front of her fancy address. Noonan put on some comfortable clothes, nothing too fancy, just a sweater set from Bergdorf’s and a plain Chanel skirt. Because she was in a hurry, she didn’t bother switching bags, and picked up the Hermes, even though it did not match the Prada boots she was wearing. “A fashion don’t,” she giggled to herself.

She rolled down the glass partition. “Take me to middle America, James, and don’t spare the horses,” Noonan chirped pleasantly to the driver.

“Alfonso. My name is Alfonso. Where’s middle America, Ms. Noonan?”

Noonan paused, slurped some refreshment (so soothing, so sweet) from her “First Aid Kit” (the clever name she had given her Christofle flask, so smart, so cunning) and said she thought it was somewhere around Midtown. She locked her door just thinking about it.

Noonan paused to consider The Bubble that the President–that unlikable man, that man sitting in her beloved Ronnie’s chair, his cheap Florsheim shoes on the Great Desk itself–finds himself in. “You cannot shake the bubble. Wherever you go, there it is,” Noonan murmured to herself in the back of the Town Car. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest President of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest President ever, was a man of the people, “at least until the people tried to kill him, and then he was trapped in the Bubble,” she grimaced, her little bird-like hands fluttered up to the ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself.

You cannot shake the bubble. Wherever you go, there it is.

“And the worst part is that the army of staff, security and aides that exists to be a barrier between a president and danger, or a president and inconvenience, winds up being a barrier between a president and reality.” Noonan noted to herself as she watched some bums picking through the garbage near the Park.

“James, stop the car! We found a real American!” She rolled down the window, waived a Benjamin at one of the men and asked him for his name. She didn’t understand his reply, so she called him Willie, which seemed like the name a man of his class might have.

“I think we all agree Mr. Obama badly needs, is an assistant whose sole job it is to explain and interpret the American people to him. Someone to translate the views of the people, and explain how they think. An advocate for the average, a representative for the normal, to the extent America does normal.”

The man starred at Noonan, and started walking towards the Benjamin. Noonan tried to engage him again.

“Do you think the anti-TSA uprising was genuine, Willie? Are you worried about getting groped when you fly?” The man made a rude gesture to Noonan, who screamed at Alfonso to gun it.

“The Special Assistant for Reality
Obama needs to hear a voice from outside the presidential bubble,” by Peggy Noonan

MPS Exclusive!

Our intrepid photojournalist, DCap, caught Noonan trying to infiltrate the workings of the common person, which was her Plan B after Plan A failed.

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan completed watching the “Death Valley Days” marathon on her old black and white Philco television set in the back bedroom at the Aviary 2, the name she christened the new Penthouse (so large, so chic), when she buzzed the concierge.

“A horse, a horse, half my kingdom for a horse,” she whispered into the phone. They quickly made arrangements for a riding lesson in The Park. Watching her beloved Ronnie in the greatest western television series ever inspired Noonan to give horseback riding another try, her previous attempt had ended in failure at the Reagan Ranch in the hills above Santa Barbara, and of course 30 years of mocking from her nemesis, Nancy Reagan.

Noonan shuddered thinking about Nancy’s scratchy voice bellowing over the hills, “Hey Ronnie look! A horse with two asses!”

“This time,” Noonan sniffed, “things will be different.”

Just like for the GOP, she mused. “Whatever word means the opposite of snakebit, that is what the Republican Party is right now.” Noonan took a thoughtful sip of her Mai Tai as she changed into her riding togs, red coat, and black boots, funny cap, and just as quickly changed her mind. “Western saddle, that’s what Ronnie would want.”

Changing into denim jeans, and a plaid flannel blouse, Noonan mused further on the luck of the GOP. “One reason they are feeling hope is that they have received two big and unexpected gifts from President Obama,” she grinned to herself, “The first, of course, was his political implosion—his quick descent and speedy fall into unpopularity, which shaped the outcome of the 2010 elections.” She cursed under her breath while struggling with the skinny jeans that seemed to stop at her ample calves. “Fuckin’ cleaners must have shrunk them,” she snarled as she took a deep quaff of Mai Tai, and tried to peel off the jeans. She worried that she might look like a turtle that rolled onto its back as she struggled to pull them off, writhing on the floor.

“Obama’s second gift, of course, is how he reacted to the election’s outcome in a way that suggested he’s still in his own world, still seeing a reality no one else is seeing,” Noonan huffed, out of breath. Noonan giggled at the thought of the very smart and unlikable man sitting at her beloved Ronnie’s desk not being aware he was not political enough, too serious, too substantive, and no one could see the size of his achievements.

Grimacing, Noonan thought about how the media was going to treat the incoming GOP freshman class, “The mainstream media this January will be looking for the nuts,” she thought as she slurped the pineapple wedge. She had seen this before when the new Republican Congress came in in 1994. The spirited Helen Chenoweth, freshman from Idaho, talked a little too much about “black helicopters.” She was portrayed as paranoid and eccentric. Bob Livingston, from New Orleans, went to his first meeting of the Appropriations Committee wielding a machete. The new speaker, Newt Gingrich, was full of pronouncements and provocations; he was a one-man drama machine.

***

Iced to the eyebrows, Noonan poured herself out of the cab at the stables in The Park and asked the driver to stick around for the return trip home.

“Howdy, Ma’am. What do you want to do today,” the friendly instructor asked her.

“As Mrs. Patrick Campbell once said, I don’t really care what people do as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses,” Noonan said as she slipped off her coat, and Lady Godiva-like, mounted her steed.

Obama’s Gifts to the GOP, by Peggy Noonan

World Exclusive Photos!

Our intrepid photojournalist, DistributorcapNYC was there!

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was greeting her guests at her combined Halloween and Election Eve party. “Happy Halloween,” Noonan said as she opened the door to her Aviary II (so large, so chic, the new penthouse was).

“Trick or Treat,” her guests squealed as Peggy handed them their treats, airline-sized bottles of booze.

The costumes, Noonan noted, were not the traditional Ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, nor things that go bump in the night, and she was sad for the lack of tradition.

Mostly Noonan’s guests seemed to prefer dressing as Democrat effigies (Pelosi clones, she noted with distaste, were scattered throughout the place), or as the more buffoonish Tea Partiers. “The O’Donnell witches with sex toys was funny the first time,” she sniffed. A little more creativity would be a welcome relief. Noonan of course was cunningly disguised as the most frightening thing she could think of: Nancy Reagan.

“Ah, Ronnie,” thought Noonan as her little bird-like hands fluttered up to her ever-present pearls, a gift from the great man himself, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever. She took another thoughtful sip of her festive halloween Mai Tai.

“Unlike the current President, this wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas,” Noonan grimaced. “The worst thing you can say about a president: He won’t even make a good former president.” and for some reason that made her smile benevolently at a parade lead by Ann Coulter dressed as a tampon dancing a conga line through the Aviary.

The television was tuned to Fox so that guests could watch the election returns, and the merriment engendered by the good, conservative results helped the party kick up a notch, as that appalling television chef says, “Bam.”

“Ah, Ronnie,” murmured Noonan to herself. “Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they have to take him more to heart, because his example here is a guide.” She grabbed another Mai Tai off the tray from the cater-waiters she had hired from her new favorite bar, The Chelsea Pier, where she liked to sing karaoke.

“The point,” Noonan said to her potted palm, “is that Reagan’s career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics… He wasn’t in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn’t in search of fame; he’d already lived a life, he was already well known, he’d accomplished things in the world.”

Working up a head of steam on her topic, she grabbed Eric Cantor by his tiger tail and said, “You have to earn your way into politics.” Spotting Michele Malkin nearby, she grabbed her by the red-checked kerchief, and declared to her, “Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) “

The room seemed to go into a frenzy with the music and the news, the crowd was spinning every which way, and Peggy Noonan was frantically hurling herself into the swirling maelstrom of it all, spilling facts about her beloved Ronnie, and spilling her beloved Mai Tai to anyone who would listen.

The revelers suddenly hushed as Sarah Palin appeared on the screen. She was defending her form of political celebrity—reality show, “Dancing With the Stars,” etc. “Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in ‘Bedtime for Bonzo,’ Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor.”

All eyes turned slowly to Noonan. “He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,” Noonan wailed at the TV, before flinging herself into a line of Madonna-Wannabees, lead by Lindsey Graham.

Americans Vote for Maturity, by Peggy Noonan

Everyone was there!

Our intrepid investigative photographer, DistributorCapNY was there!

(Hat tip: Batocchio alerted me that Nooner had gone nuts by Mooselini’s apostasy.)

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was in her new favorite bar, the odd little place where one could sometimes find Nancy Reagan impersonators (“complete with a five o’clock shadow, just like the real thing”) hosting Karaoke night. The barkeep at The Chelsea Piers was discreet and he kept Noonan’s Hurricane glass replenished with Mai Tai, and so all was well.

“Today, of course, is a day of Miracles,” thought Noonan as she took a thoughtful sip of Mai Tai, and signaling Thor, the barkeep, to come over via the usual signal (a Benjamin waived in the air), she changed her order to the national drink of Chile, a Pisco Sour. So cool, so refreshing, so sour. Inspired and Inspiring, she noted with a satisfied pucker and smacking of the lips.

“Chile! Viva Chile! If I had your flag I would wave it today,” Noonan declared to the television mounted on the wall. “Chile needed this, but actually the world needed it, and that is why we, the world, are watching the rescue.”

“President Sebastián Piñera, in office five months when the mine caved in, saw the situation for what it was. Thirty three men in a hole in the ground, in a mine that probably shouldn’t have been open. A disaster, a nation riveted,” thought Noonan.

“Unlike our President Obama who sat by, helpless while oil spewed out of a hole in the bottom of the ocean,” Noonan grimaced. “Last summer Americans watched professionals and the government seem helpless to stop the Gulf oil spill, a disaster every bit as predictable as a mine cave-in. For months we watched on TV the spewing of the oil into the sea,” Noonan sniffed.

Thor strode back over to Noonan with a fresh Pisco. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said to her, gesturing to the television. “Chile can rescue those miners in the San José mines,” he continued, “while Massey Energy let about the same number of miners die in a mining disaster in West Virginia. Chile must have better regulations, or enforce them better, or something, huh?”

“The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism,” Noonan replied.

Viva Chile! They Left No Man Behind, by Peggy Noonan

Bonus! We have pictures of our favorite Coal Miner’s Daughter:

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan adjusted her clever disguise (Over-sized Chanel sunglasses–Lunettes en Française–and Gautier silk scarf), and made her stealth entrance into the Atlantic City Casino. Glancing about to see if the paparazzi had spotted her, she made her way to the cashier to buy some tokens for the slot machines.

Noonan had seen the incessant advertisements on the television for the state lotteries, and she was going under cover to do some old-fashioned journalism about gambling, to understand the appeal.

A brief discussion with the concierge revealed that Casinos and gambling were no longer thought of as a sin as before. Give government the right to reap revenues from the public desire to gamble, and you’ll soon have government doing something your humble local bookie never had the temerity to try: convince the people that gambling is a moral good. “This,” sniffed Noonan, cannot be true.”

Noonan looked about the room at the silver-haired ladies starring slatternly into the displays from the slot machines. “I’ll start over there,” she thought, and waddled over to the bank of machines, inserted a token, and pulled the lever. The machine whirred, and blinked, flashed some lights, and a siren went off as a series of fruit displayed and suddenly the infernal machine belched out tokens, a shower of them, all different colors into her bucket. Noonan felt the color leave her face, and seemed a little dizzy for a moment. The older ladies looked at her with jealousy and rage, and Noonan stuck her tongue out at them.

And so the afternoon went, drop a token in the slot, pull a lever, and the merry tinkle of tokens filling into her bucket. Now and then a waitress showed up with a Mai Tai, on the house. “What a wonderful business model,” Noonan grinned to herself, “free drinks just for playing a game. Rather like how the Democrats keep the poor enslaved,” she grimaced.

Noonan could not help but think of Greece, corrupt and corrupting state. “Over decades the Greeks turned their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and gave as many citizens as possible a whack at it,” she sniffed to herself as she pulled the lever.

A bit bored, and iced to the eyebrows from all the free Mai Tais, Noonan glided rather majestically to the roulette table, where she spotted her old friend, Bill Bennet, the Secretary of Education under Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever. She sat next to him.

“Peggy, it’s good to see you. I’m here, um, doing research,” he mumbled under his breath. “Don’t tell Elayne you saw me here.”

“Me too, Bill,” Noonan replied as she showed him the bucket of tokens she had won.

Noonan spotted that no bets were on the red 80 (her lucky number, the year that Ronnie became president, so handsome, so strong), and put the bucket on it.

The croupier asked her the value of the bet, to ensure that the house could cover it, if she should win.

“Americans weren’t born to be accountants. It’s not in our DNA! We’re supposed to be building the Empire State Building,” she replied, dryly. Another Mai Tai arrived, like magic.

“Come to Momma, you sonofabitch,” Noonan squealed as the wheel spun and the ball bounced about.

It was now Morning in Atlantic City, and Noonan was seeing a thousand points of light as she was escorted out of the Casino, penniless, paparazzi snapping away.

Revolt of the Accountants, by Peggy Noonan

Bonus Tracks!

The amazing DCap was there, and managed to get some pictures of Noonan’s night of debouchery!

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan hung up the phone on room service and waited for the bell hop to bring her the bottle of Bacardi and other essential supplies she ordered. “Desperate times,” she said to no one there, “calls for desperate measures.” She took a swig from her fast-emptying First Aid Kit, the amusing name she had given for her Cristofle hip flask (so cunning, so chic).

The little notice on the desk in her suite warned of tornadic activity, and so Noonan was laying in supplies, just in case. “Being forewarned is forearmed,” she muttered to herself after tipping the bellhop a whole dollar, and proceeded to the mini bar to mix a make-shift Mai Tai.

“Tornadoes are tearing up the polical landscape, too” grimly thought Noonan as she took a contemplative sip of the sub-par beverage in a hard-water stained tumbler. “And the president, this president, this likable man who speaks so well at saying nothing, this man seems to be the eye of the hurricane.” Noonan giggled at her own mixed metaphor.

“Presidents do not speak to Rolling Stone,” she muttered with disapproval, but where else could he go to do some hippie punching as Jane Hamsher called it. “Hippie punching, such an amusing term, as if the Democrats could ever set up a narrative now for someone to take the blame after the midterms,” Noonan sipped thoughtfully.

“Everyone is distancing themselves from this president,” Noonan sniffed, “Unlike when Ronnie was president. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, was also unpopular at this point in his presidency,” her little bird-like hands had fluttered up to her ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself. “But he didn’t do any elephant punching, and if he were a Democrat, there would be no donkey punches,” she declared.

Refreshing her Mai Tai, Noonan glanced at USA Today on the coffee table, the sad numbers of unemployed blazoned across the front page.

In an interview David Axlerod, the advisor to the President, said abortion will “certainly be an issue,” for Democrats. It will be raised “across the country.” At this point in history, with America teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, negative advertising is even more destructive, more actually wicked, than it was in the past. Noonan mocked him for that one, when the issue was so obvious.

Sirens were going off outside, and Noonan stumbled to the balcony door to see what was happening. Just then, the bellhop rushed into the room to evacuate her. Grabbing her hand as she was about the fling open the balcony door, he yelled “What the hell are you thinking, lady!”

“The issue this year is the size, role, weight and demands of government,” Noonan slurred at him as he lead her to the safety of the basement.

The Twister of 2010 — by Peggy Noonan

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan walked off the stage at The Chelsea Piers (her favorite new watering hole) to thunderous applause after she finished singing the venerable smash hit of the Reagan era, Xanadu. She even wore her roller skates on stage, and did a little pirouette as her big finish. “This time, I will beat Nancy Reagan,” she thought to herself, triumphantly. Her nemesis, a Nancy Reagan impersonator — “complete with five-o’clock shadow, just like the real one” — would take to the Karaoke stage later in the program, so there was time to sit down and enjoy some refreshment that an admirer had sent to her.

“Ah, nectar!” she said as she took the first sip of the Mai Tai, so sweet, so refreshing, like a little vacation in your mouth.

“Unlike the vacation that The President is taking in Martha’s Vineyard,” she grimaced to herself. All presidents take vacations, and all are criticized for it, the wrong place, the wrong time. She noted to herself that Bill Clinton also went to the Vineyard, “Clinton even had it poll-tested before he went,” she smirked.

“But we knew Clinton, we got him: Southern Governor. Good old boy, drawlin’, flirtin’ bad boy. And we got Dubya, Texan, black sheep from a good family. And Ronald Wilson Reagan, we got Ronnie, Midwesterner, serious, humorous, patriotic, the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever.” Her little bird-like hands fluttered up to the ever-present pearl necklace, a gift from the great man himself.

“But,” she sighed, “we don’t get this man, this horrible little man, this wretched , sleek, cerebral, detached academic from Chicago by way of Hawaii and Indonesia. We don’t know that guy.” Noonan took a thoughtful sip of the Mai Tai, and the waiter brought her a refill, another gift from the admirer. Noonan smiled shyly and accepted the fresh drink.

“Obama doesn’t fit any categories, people think he is a Muslim, and this leads to criticism of his leadership. We want him to be a guy we know, be someone we get,” she thought. “And,” she sneered, “he doesn’t get us. He is focused on what individually interests him. He relies most on his own thinking. He focused on health care, seeing the higher logic. The people focused on something else.”

Noonan noted dryly that the Nancy Reagan impersonator was singing Afternoon Delight off-key, and realized that victory was in her grasp. “Take THAT, Nancy,” she muttered as she gulped down the rest of the Mai Tai.

The judges always ask the contestants to stand and they listen to the applause from the audience to judge who wins, and so when her name was called, Noonan dutifully stood up, the roller skates slid out from under her and she crashed into a nearby table before skidding to a stop on her ample derrière and passed out.

The Nancy Reagan impersonator took the prize from the judges hands, and the waiter brought her the bill for the Mai Tais. “I get you, Noonan. I completely get you.”

We Just Don’t Understand, by Peggy Noonan

UPDATE: DistributorCap has discovered an important video of an earlier performance of Peggington Noonington’s:

Anatomy of a Column

he door to the boudoir shut with a definite click and Ross Douthat heard the lock set. Once again Abbie, his long-suffering wife, condemned him to sleep on the couch. Alone.

“You know,” he shouted at the locked door, “other couples sleep together sometimes.” The silence was deafening. “Everyone’s doin’ it, except for me,” he muttered to himself, as he put the sex toy back in the box. He would return it to the shop in the morning. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now looking back on it, maybe the plan had some flaws.

“It’s all about winning, life is,” Douthat noted that the ends justify the means, and Abbie should forgive him for wanting to win. So what if there were embarrassing toys. What’s sportsmanship got to do with connubial bliss?

“Maybe like Roger Clemens,” mused Douthat staring at the bottle of blue pills, “I shouldn’t use performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe I should be judged just on my ability and on the field of play, where pitches are thrown and swings are taken, and everything else fades into irrelevance.”

“Naw.”

What Roger Clemens Wants, by Ross Douthat

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan was staring at the BetaMax, spewing out tape, and looked askance. She was sad to see the BetaMax die, and worried that her old Black & White Philco might be next. Her estranged son had the tapes converted to digital, her old BetaMax tapes, now dead and lying in a tangle at her feet, of the addresses that the greatest President of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, Ronald Wilson Reagan, had made during his eight years in office.

These speeches (so grand, so well-written, these speeches, well, written by her) were now preserved as bits and bytes and flickers of light, and could be viewed on something called an iPod. If only she could figure out how to use it. “The BetaMax,” she grumbled to herself, “was hard enough, now I have to learn something new.”

“I’m pecking away at a piece of plastic, and withdrawn from the immediate reality around me,” she grimaced to herself as she sat alone in the Aviary 2, the name she gave her new penthouse, so grand, so chic. She poured herself another Mai Tai from the pitcher. “Ah, nectar,” she murmured to herself.

She examined the iPod, and recalled seeing two woman walking down the street who banged into each other because they were so self-involved with their own music, their own conversation, whether written or oral. She was told this happens frequently, and was called a BlackBerry Jam. “Slang confuses and debases those who use it,” she sniffed, as she called Lars, her assistant from the paper on the rotary phone, a 1970s era Princes model, pink, to match her boudoir.

After a few moments of negotiation, he agreed to meet her at the Aviary and to show her how to operate the iPod. Again.

“We are surrounded by screens,” she sighed. “Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing, more debasement, more slang.” Noonan gave a thoughtful bite to the pineapple wedge, so juicy, so sweet. “When I go to the cafe, I am no longer greeted, people just check their email, wretched email, thinking that if they can just get on top of things, they can master them. Always on portable phones, talking, talking, talking, and not listening.”

And yet, Noonan noted to herself, technology and life marches on. “There are two paths. One is to surrender, to allow the crowd to lead you around by the nose and your experience to become ever more shallow. The other is to step back and pare down.” Her little bird-like hands fluttered up to her ever-present pearl necklace, so reassuring,so comforting in a discombobulating world.

She buzzed in her assistant, opened the door to the penthouse, and stood back as the ever-efficient Lars entered. “Make it work,” she pleaded with him, as she handed the offending plastic device over to him. “I’ve been trying to pare down all morning. I will not be BlackBerry jammed,” she declared.

“That’s your garage door opener, Peggy.”

Information Overload is Nothing New — by Peggy Noonan

Bonus: the best comment at the WSJ on her article: “Fortunately, Ole Peg provides the perfect remedy to an overload of useful information.”

Anatomy of a Column

eggy Noonan had just finished being inappropriately patted down and walked through the X-ray thing that seems to function as a mammogram, with her arms up straight, at Reagan National airport.

“I didn’t really want a freelance mammogram, and I’m not sure it’s right that you give me one,” she whispered to the TSA prison-matron. They took her First Aid Kit away (the amusing name she had given her hip flask, Christofle, so chic, so elegant) telling her it was too big, and held more than was allowed by law. She was brusquely told to sit down “over there.”

Noonan padded over to a bank of chairs in her stocking feet and proceeded to slip on her well-worn Weejan loafers. It was yet another grim trip into the gaping maw that had become airline travel. “Some things should not be commodities,” she noted. Sitting next to her was an elderly gentleman wearing a full Cleveland: plaid polyester pants, white belt and shoes, and a short-sleeved blouse of dubious quality and heritage.

Her little bird-like hands fluttered up to her ever present pearl necklace (so classic, so comforting in a rough storm of life) that the greatest president of the last half of the last century, maybe the greatest president ever, Ronald Wilson Reagan, had given to her.

Cleveland leered at her, his rheumy blue eyes dully sparkling, “What’cha in for, sweetheart?” He looked amused as if he might put one of his knobby hands on her knee.

“I have to tell you that it’s not polite to block my path and attempt to force a conversation.”

After the requisite lecture about bringing on liquids, the TSA agent told her she could empty the flask and then bring it on board. They were not amused when she asked for ice.

“No one has any sense of proportion anymore, now that we are a service economy, forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it makes us all a little mad.”

She stumbled onto the plane, so garish and full of the unwashed masses yearning to breath free, and struggled to get her Louis Vuitton into the overhead bin. The nice young steward came over to help her. She handed him her bag, sat down in her seat and fiddled with the air nozzle.

“I’m sorry, lady, I’m checking this bag in. It’s too big and too heavy to safely stow overhead.”

“I’m not paying you to be rude to me,” she snapped back, reading the card about what to do in an emergency, and noting the location of the evacuation slides.

We Pay Them to be Rude to Us, by Peggy Noonan

UPDATE: – We have photographic proof that Peggington Noonington was on that flight:

All the illustrations are courtesy of DistributorCapNY – my very good friend and talented artist!

UPDATE 2: Our good friend and Scissorhead, LibHomo, has an excellent reaction to Nooner’s usual dithering.