But as I keep angrily declaiming from the brass rail, it is by their usages that ye shall know them. (In my old age I'm turning into a cracker-barrel deconstructionist -- the corruption of language interests me more than the corruption of Senators, probably because it is less obvious and the damage more serious.)
One of Noonan's fave rhetorical tropes is the invented quote -- you know: "I bet this horrible person says to himself I'm a big stupid liberal and I hate the American people and love Satan," that sort of thing. Of course, we all do it, but it can get old very quickly (one tends to lose the distinction between the genuine stupid ideas and the merely attributed ones) and Noonan reeeeeally overdoes it -- in fact she has devoted whole columns to it, as when she channeled the late Paul Wellstone, whose consciousness was clearly incomprehensible to her, but whose usefulness as an object of Republican propaganda she understood all too well.
But this bit from today's column contains that schtick's equivalent of a Triple Lutz:
The White House is exploiting American alarm at uncontrolled borders to get its way. This of course has added to the sense of national alarm. They believe the alarm works for them: If you don't pass our bill we'll never control your borders--yes, "your"--and you'll suffer!That's right -- in the middle of an invented monologue, Noonan actually stops to comment indignantly at the words she has put in someone else's mouth!
Though Noonan has many distinguishing neuroses as a propagandist, I think this one reflects a common tendency among her whole tribe: the ever-increasing certainty that one's straw men are in fact real people. It's sort of like what happens to some artists and the characters they invent, except, you know, totally evil.
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