Peggy Noonan doesn’t like this sort of thing but she is living in her New York City bubble. The people who live outside the east coast alternative universe know better. If someone doesn’t stop this runaway train, our children and grandchildren will blame us and rightly so.
I’m disappointed with Noonan, who used to be a gifted writer and often perceptive columnist. She still thinks we need a self-appointed group of Stone Age chieftains to keep the rabble in line:
“Who are the Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They’re the oldest and wisest.”
To me, these words seem laced with sarcasm, because the Elders were clearly not the wisest. But Noonan is being serious!
Noonan’s real unease appears to be that her cozy clique is passing away. Her confidence in the supposed “New Elders” who run networks, newspapers and Web sites is comical.
— Network audiences are fragmenting (It’s been years since I watched a nightly news program, and I don’t miss it).
— We know what’s happening to newspapers.
— And the establishment Web sites Noonan evidently favors face infinite competition from other Web sites with smarter owners who don’t fear the 21st Century.
What a waste of talent.
She is skilled at putting words together but the content isn’t what it once was, if it ever was. I can remember the ceremonial aspects of watching network news when I was in college. We would all sit around and watch them talk about what had been said. I liked David Brinkley until he died. George Stephanopolis is doing a good job with that show now and I often watch it in preference to Fox.
I used to read five newspapers every day. Now, I read the internet sites, including the lefty ones. I think it is so sad, in an amusing sort of way, how Washington Monthly has banned me from commenting. They really don’t want other opinions. I think that is far more a characteristic of the left. Limbaugh puts callers who disagree on first. I’ve heard him keep them on for 15 minutes, an eternity in radio.
Years ago, when Michael Jackson was on KABC, I called the show during the campaign to pass an initiative to limit auto insurance rates, a classical leftist theme. The fellow who had written the initiative had included a provision to roll back premiums 30%. There was no way that could happen (and it didn’t) and I called the show to point out what a cheap populist gesture this was.
Michael Jackson hung up on me and commented to the author of Prop 103 that I obviously worked for an insurance company. What a stupid remark !
Anyway, a year or so later, Jackson was on Saturday and soon after was gone altogether. He was blown away by Limbaugh.
The notion that the greatest city in the nation, perhaps in the world, somehow is out of things is absurd. The tea parties are fun things. Gets the populists all riled up. Now let them give back all their entitlements and the stuff that goes with govt and they can be taken seriously. They will have their day with elections. If they are “right,” then their people will be a part of Big Govt…did Bush and his GOP make govt smaller? Lower taxers for the middle class?
ps: the tea comes from…china.
That comment doesn’t even make sense.