Until the 2008 election, I rather liked Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column. True, her writing style was prolix, run-on and a bit on the vague side, but one could take pleasure in it in the same way that one could take pleasure in eating a meringue – an elusive flavor with not much substance.
But there’s something about Sarah Palin that’s brought Noonan’s ugly – and well hidden – side to light. At the convention, Saint Peggy of the Pacific Disposition had her own Spanish Cloister moment, using naughty words to express her lofty displeasure at Palin’s nomination. And like Browning’s Spanish monk, Noonan’s spewed her jealous venom ever since.
Gr-r-r-there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims–
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
But as Stuart Schwartz has observed in the American Thinker, Peggy’s jealousy is not “the kind reserved for girlfriends who can squeeze into size 2 jeans”. Far from it. It’s the kind of venom reserved by a somebody for a nobody who refuses to know her place. Worse, this particular nobody actually does things – like run for mayor, restructure Alaska’s natural gas industry, root out corrupt politicians, become governor and run for Vice President.
And Bimbo Palin did all of it without Dame Peggy’s permission. After all, she’s one of the anointed. Hell, she’s a gatekeeper. No one – and I mean no one – gets into the club without her permission. Except, that is, for certain snowmobiling trash who don’t even know enough to defer to their betters.
Noonan resembles the character of Max Mercy in Barry Levinson’s, The Natural. Mercy, played by Robert Duval, is a sports columnist who takes his role as gatekeeper very seriously as he lectures baseball hero Roy Hobbs. There’s only one problem: Mercy has never played baseball himself. He just criticizes those who do.
MERCY: They come and they go, Hobbs. They come and they go. I’ll be around here longer than you or anybody else here. I’m here to protect this game.
HOBBS: Whose game?
MERCY: I do it by making or breaking the likes of you.
HOBBS: Did you ever play ball, Max?
MERCY: No, never have. But I make it a little more fun to watch, you see. And after today, whether you’re a goat or a hero . . . . you’re gonna make me a great story. See you round, Hobbs.
So tell me, Peggy, did you ever play ball? Think about it the next time you decide to spew on someone who does.
