Peggy Noonan: Senile Hag

I suppose it's only appropriate that Noonan was once a speech-writer for the nation's most infamous (and public) case of dementia, Ronald Reagan: and no, I don't speak of the illness which ultimately took our fifth-worst President's life (cf. Buchanan, Johnson, Grant, George II), I speak of the demented, anti-American worldview which brought him into power and guided his policy-making for eight years of unmitigated national disaster (punctuated by the treason of pigs such as Oliver North, the destruction of the working class, and the fall of the Soviet Union completely independent of Reagan's best efforts to send us into nuclear holocaust). Noonan was a big part of that, partly due to premature senility, partly due to being dropped on her head at the ages of 4, 6, and 9, and partly due to the fact that she speaks English fluently but is simply not very educated. She strikes me as the sort of well-groomed nutjob who slept through high school and college and became successful simply because she refused (out of greed, not perseverance) to accept her lot in life: that is, to spend her days scrubbing the jock-straps of high school wrestlers, or sniffing glue, or knitting mittens with the wrong number of fingers, or whatever it is that people with absolutely no common sense or innate talent but a healthy dose of get-up-and-go do with themselves these days, now that George II has wrecked the economy.

Exhibit A in the argument that Peggy Noonan is, as noted above, a "senile hag," is the following article about the recent life-in-prison-without-parole verdict in the Zacharias Moussaoui case.

[Incidentally, for those inclined to charge me with sexism for calling Noonan a "hag," you're much mistaken: I'm using the obsolete definition of the term (definition "2b" for those of you keeping score at home), to wit, "a female demon." I will concede that I opted for "hag" over "succubus"--otherwise, a serviceable synonym--because the notion of attributing any sex appeal to Noonan whatsoever is akin, to me, to the notion of urinating through my eyeballs: if it ever happened, I would expect to be dead within three to five seconds, having been struck down by the Hand of God].

Noonan on Why We Use the Death Penalty

Because it shows that we have "nerve." Because it appeals to our "base passions." Because it shows the world we haven't lost our "crude old grit."

Erm. Last time I checked, you don't support State-sponsored homicide because you're having a mid-life crisis. In fact, any juror who stated during voir dire that he believed killing defendants showed "nerve, grit, and base passion" would be immediately stricken from the venire as a veritable lunatic. I should note here that Noonan, like her former boss, is indeed just such a lunatic.

Noonan on Why Moussaoui Deserved to Die

"[W]e should have put him to death, and for one big reason...[h]e could have stopped [9/11]. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died."

This I actually agree with. I suppose Noonan supports the immediate execution of George W. Bush, also. And most of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. And, let's see, Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld, Hadley, Rove, Cheney. Who am I missing? Hmm. I think I'd be willing to rethink my stance on the death penalty, if mere "omissions"--failures to act--can be punished with death. I've got a number of politicians I'm willing to move to the head of the line. Like, now. No? Oh well.

Noonan on The Best Way to Describe Spending the Rest of Your Life (Sixty or So Years) in a 7 x 12 Cage 23 Hours a Day With No Human Contact Except One or Two Prison Guards Who Will Only Spit in Your Food and Pepper You With Racist, Anti-Islamic Slurs at All Hours

"A free pass."

I think I've been too hard on Noonan. And the Bush Administration. Okay, okay, you convinced me: I'm willing to give all of them "a free pass" from here on out. That okay with you, Peggy?

Noonan on Why We Must Have the Death Penalty

To show that "murder is serious, dreadfully serious..."

I think the use of the death penalty in the U.S. says more about the people who require bloodshed in order to comprehend that "murder is serious" than it does about those who think that caging people for the rest of their natural lives sends the message pretty well. Is this just a failure of imagination on Noonan's part? Or bloodlust? Or is she just, as supposed previously, a stupid old hag?

[A note to those who might argue I'm being an ageist by employing "old" as a pejorative; you misunderstand. I mean old as in "ye olde tavern," that is, meaning, "belonging to a remote or former period of history," in keeping with the fact that "hag," as used here, is an archaic term. Thus Noonan, in our modern spelling of the language, is a "stupid old hag." She is also a "bitch," again in the "2b" sense, meaning that she is a "lewd woman"--"lewd" used here, of course, in the archaic sense, meaning "wicked." Noonan could also be described by a word which begins with "c," a word which means [2b] "a woman who is thoroughly disliked (by the public)," as I submit to you that anyone with a scrap of sense would recoil at the bloodthirsty pap which issues from this woman's mouth like so much untreated sewage. I guess what I'm saying is that anal mustard is more valuable than anything this woman writes, a fact which has vaulted her into a successful career with, natch, The Wall Street Journal editorial page].

Noonan on What Moussaoui Not Getting the Death Penalty Means

"[If not Moussaoui, then] who deserves it? Who ever did?....[and] do we still have it [the death penalty]?"

Hmm. I'm tempted to answer "no one," "nobody," and "yes, you silly hag," but of course the answer's more complex than that, as one must speak to a puerile whelp like Noonan in terms she understands, assuming, for the moment, that simply dangling raw, bloody meat in front of her fails to have the desired effect. The fact is, if you're going to have the death penalty--Peggy--a good place to start is to only kill people who do things. Not people who don't do things. Also, killing "incompetent" terrorists who've never successfully killed anyone is a whole lot less efficient than finding and killing "competent" and "murderous" terrorists (cf. Osama "Dead or Alive" Bin Laden), as I think we'd like to keep the former group around as propaganda setpieces/object lessons in How Not to Do It. Moussaoui is as able a terrorist as Noonan is an essayist; the difference is, Moussaoui's failures landed him in federal SuperMax for the rest of his life, while Noonan gets to prey on ignorant yokels for at least a couple decades more. I don't think that's fair. On the other hand, Noonan's incompetence as a reporter, journalist, intellectual, essayist, and political analyst is substantially less egregious than Moussaoui's incompetence as a pilot, conspirator, terrorist, and astrophysicist (this last is unproven, but the man just doesn't strike me as a competent astrophysicist, so). That's why I'd suggest only two years in SuperMax for Noonan.

Why Noonan Would Enjoy Two Years in Federal SuperMax

Noonan's never been to, read about, heard about, seen pictures of, or spent fifteen seconds considering the policies of, federal SuperMax. That certainly doesn't stop her from writing about it. If there's one thing which is a pain about writing nationally-syndicated essays, it's doing research. Also, knowing stuff--that's hard, too. Just ask Mike Barnicle, another champion intellectual. That said, why burst Peggy's bubble? If she believes that federal SuperMax in Colorado

...get[s] cable TV...[allows inmates to use their] hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad...[allows] visitors with whom [inmates] can do impolite things like plot against our country...

why tell her otherwise? Better, I think, to give her two years in SuperMax, and then see if she writes an article with a fucking clue. For the record, you can't receive visitors in SuperMax, you can't speak to other inmates, you don't get exercise equipment, and you don't get a television. On the bright side, you do get a shower inside your 7ft.-by-12ft. concrete cell--you know, the one you'll spend 8,395 of your 8,760 hours each year in, for the next 60 years--which would be great for Noonan, as I really rather suspect she is a dirty and stupid senile hag, "dirty" meaning, of course [3b], "malicious," and [4a], "unethical," and [5a], "unpleasant/distasteful," and finally [8], "producing a very great amount of long-lived radioactive fallout."

Because, make no mistake, ignorance as petty and scandalous and willful and grotesque and unconscionable as Noonan's lasts very long indeed.

That is why it must be contained.

In SuperMax.

For two years.