Friday, October 18, 2013

CRAZY JESUS LADY'S CRISIS OF AUTHORITY.

Peggy Noonan has reanimated Robert Taft so that he may opine on the recent shutdown. I gotta tell you, folks, I hardly know what to do with this thing. Back when Noonan created a monologue for Paul Wellstone, for example, in which the recently-deceased Democratic Senator basically told people to vote Republican because Wellstone supporters were assholes -- well, that was so spectacularly evil and vicious that one could almost admire it, especially as it came wrapped in that cloying Crazy Jesus Lady manner that convinced readers (at least those whose ears had been trained by Bob Bartley's Mighty Wurlitzer) that Noonan only meant the best for everyone.

She seems to want to do something similarly sneaky with this latest necro-ventriloquist act, with "Robert Taft" speaking from the other side to convince the Tea Party crowd there's nothing wrong with the Grand Old Party that some wisdom from a long-dead party hack can't fix. It's about as successful as Jeff Goldblum's final transformation in The Fly. I mean, get a load of this:
What is the purpose of a party? 
"A theater critic once said a critic is someone who knows where we want to go but can't drive the car. That can apply here. It is the conservatives of the party, in my view, who've known where we want to go, and often given the best directions. The party is the car. Its institutions, including its most experienced legislators and accomplished political figures, with the support of the people, are the driver. You want to keep the car looking good. It zooms by on a country road, you want people seeing a clean, powerful object. You want to go fast, but you don't want it crashing. You drive safely and try to get to your destination in one piece."
If "Taft" were delivering this at a Kiwanis dinner, when he got to telling them that institutions were driving the car that is the Republican Party, the hosts would be getting nervous -- and around the time "Taft" was giving these instructions to the Tea Party, they'd have cut his mike and dragged him from the dais:
Get smart about this. Don't let the media keep killing your guys in the field. Make it hard for them. Enter primaries soberly. When you have to take out an establishment man, do. But if you don't, stick with him but stiffen his spine.
Jesus Christ, sounds like Spencer Tracy's closing speech from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as performed by James Lileks. It also conjures a vision of deranged Birchers in tricorners and knee-breeches gang-tackling Mitch McConnell as "Taft" nods sagely; when McConnell escapes they chase him, brandishing a metal pipe to ram up his ass.

But the weirdest, and slightly sad, thing is the spectacle of Noonan selling Washington authority to the kind of people who think Ted Cruz is Presidential timber. She brings up Allen Drury -- Allen Drury, for chrissakes! Couldn't she have at least lightened things up with Art Buchwald? -- as if it'll mean something to them. (If she'd picked None Dare Call It Treason instead, she might have stood more of a chance. Their past is not Bourbon-at-Clyde's, but fluoride-in-water.) She figures the upstarts want power, just like the Brash Young Comers in old movies, and like those characters they will respond to a salutary scolding so long as the scold is an old white man in a suit. At one point she even has "Taft" say, "Stop acting like Little Suzie with her nose pressed against the window watching the fancy people at the party. You've arrived and you know it." That's like telling Castro, "OK, kid, Batista has heard you and he's offering you a nice suite at the Hotel Nacional. Try not to screw up!"

She thinks the Mau Maus can be converted, but she's just catching flak.

Plus there's this, from "Taft"'s Epistle to the Establishment Men:
Deep down, do you patronize those innocents on the farms, in the hinterlands? Or perhaps you understand yourself to be a fat, happy mosquito on the pond scum that is them?
I suppose you could say there is genius in it, as there is absolutely no one else on God's green earth besides Noonan who talks this way or thinks anyone else does.

120 comments:

  1. Halloween_Jack2:31 PM

    "Stop acting like Little Suzie with her nose pressed against the window watching the fancy people at the party. You've arrived and you know it."


    They're more like the bros who moon the people at the party, leaving the imprints of their buttcheeks on the glass, then whine that they're not being treated like grownups.


    Can't get out of the boat because the WSJ wants money--shyeah--but I'm guessing that she's banking on enough readers to not know who Robert Taft was.

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  2. Gromet2:34 PM

    You guys, it's going to be okay -- I've consulted the Necronomicon, and it says we can dispel her whole elaborate Taft resurrection -- no matter how many pentagrams and candles she's used -- by seancing up Dorothy Parker for a single quip.

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  3. Jay B.2:43 PM

    If I've heard it once, I've heard it a million times, you are either the mosquito or you're the pond scum.

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  4. Mad Monk2:46 PM

    "The Pond Scum That is Them" would be a great album title, and that's about all I got out of that.

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  5. "Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa."
    DP

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  6. Gromet2:55 PM

    So I am a nitwit: I meant to reference how Parker cut Taft down by calling him "the little man on the wedding cake." But it was actually Alice Roosevelt Longworth who said this. About Dewey.

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  7. Oh yeah, I remember all those American history classes that went on and on about what a great leader Theodore Roosevelt was and how he...
    Wait what? TAFT?!?!?!

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  8. Jay B.3:03 PM

    And to be fair to Noons, I agree with her that Republicans are either blood sucking disease spreading vermin or life-choking, pollution-spawned environmental hazards.

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  9. scottclevenger3:08 PM

    Saaay...! With the Tea Party currently polling way behind Pond Scum, I smell a ripe re-branding opportunity! At least, I think that's what I'm smelling,,,

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  10. XeckyGilchrist3:10 PM

    when he got to telling them that institutions were driving the car that is the Republican Party, the hosts would be getting nervous



    I disagree with Zombie Taft that the institutions are driving the car, but those who *are* driving belong in them.

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  11. I like Nooners best when she channels Walter Hagen:



    “A golf writer once said a golf writer is someone who knows how we want to score but can’t putt to save his fucking life. That can apply here. It’s the Tea Partites of the party, in my view, who’ve known how to read the greens and often give the best tips. The party is the green. Its institutions, including its most experienced chippers and accomplished bunker players, with the support of the gallery, are the ball strokers. A well-stroked ball is key. You want to keep the green looking good. If people get up close they can appreciate it’s rolling about fourteen on the Stimpmeter, firm but will still hold a well-struck approach. You want it enticing, but watch out for the traps! You drive into the fairway and try to get home in two.”
    Good Lord that woman gets me hot.

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  12. Jay B.3:12 PM

    Absolutely! "Hey, you got your mosquitos in my pond scum! You got your pond scum in my mosquitos! Why choose? Mosquitos and pond scum are at the heart of today's Republican Party. Big Tent! USA! USA!"

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  13. tigrismus3:12 PM

    I know! I wonder what she thinks tea partiers' favorite Taft presidential act was? The income tax? Or sending money overseas to help achieve diplomatic goals? Or maybe cracking down on corporations? No, I know, the support for easier immigration!

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  14. Bizarro Mike3:13 PM

    I do not think Nooners gets paid for these columns. I think she got fired long ago, but every once in a while when she's really sloshed, she shows up at the office with a manuscript like this. I mean, the zooming and the looking good and the tell about doing something "soberly." The paper publishes it partly out of pity and partly to get her to take the gin-stink elsewhere.

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  15. Jay B.3:17 PM

    Institutions are notoriously bad drivers. Hell, I once saw the Federal Reserve pass me on the fucking shoulder and I think it was drunk on the blood of newborn Christian children.

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  16. Derelict3:24 PM

    As easy as it is to put the Nooners up for ridicule (and she does surely deserve it--and a heaping helping of scorn with a side of derision), I have to wonder at her editor for allowing this thing into print. It's the kind of screed that gets even your most devout readers and supporters writing letters that boil down to "WTF?!?!?!"

    Nooners is nuts, but her editor is really in need of help if he/she thinks this kind of thing is worthwhile.

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  17. Derelict3:26 PM

    Would this comment care to accompany me on a long road trip?

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  18. Halloween_Jack3:28 PM

    This is the same outfit that cuts James "Calling Him Bugfuck Crazy Is An Insult To The Sexual Tastes Of Insects" Taranto a check on a regular basis.

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  19. Budbear3:30 PM

    Sweet jumpin' Jesus on a cracker! That woman's just ain't right in the head. Robert Taft? Do you think that the troglodytes she aiming for have any clue re: what the fuck she's rambling on about? Robert Taft? Why not John C. Calhoun? Now that was a guy the Tea Buggers could relate to, though probably never heard of either.

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  20. Halloween_Jack3:30 PM

    Ted Cruz as West Nile Virus. Discuss.

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  21. coozledad3:32 PM

    Deep down, Peggy, do you want to cut that Stoli with some ice cubes and a little water, or drink like those folks on the farms, in the hinterlands? Or perhaps you understand yourself to be beyond the influence of drink, a preserved cephalopod in a jar the yahoos put next to their collection of shock abortions that is what is them.



    Those?

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  22. Budbear3:39 PM

    The Tafts are sorta like the Bushes of Ohio.

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  23. BigHank534:01 PM

    West Nile Virus, frankly, looks to be more survivable.

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  24. coozledad4:09 PM

    Speaking of some of those "innocents from the hinterlands" and driving, last Friday night a carload of them lost control on the curve in front of our farm, swung through a ditch, and continued sideways about thirty yards back across the road, across the right of way, through fifteen fence posts and assorted saplings, until they were "braked' by a large Virginia pine. There must have been enough of them alive in the Toyota truck (we found fragments of it) to flip it back over and call their buddies for help getting it off our property. The highway patrolman we called when we found the wreckage said no accident report had been filed, but from the skid pattern on the road they were probably doing over 100mph.


    I know they were Tea Party, because they left their Grizzly Long Cut Moistened Dips.

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  25. BigHank534:10 PM

    I don't think we even need to go that far--half a dozen capsules of Antabuse should do the trick.

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  26. XeckyGilchrist4:13 PM

    Jebus. I'm glad none of you humans were hurt.

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  27. satch4:14 PM

    Nahh... The WSJ publishes Noonan because they don't have a Comics section...

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  28. coozledad4:16 PM

    Don't drive at night in the country. And pick your way through it carefully in daylight.

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  29. satch4:16 PM

    Better check to see if your chain saw is missing...

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  30. coozledad4:19 PM

    Even if they took my chainsaw, I'd have their earplugs (about twenty pairs of them).


    And their chaw.

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  31. JennOfArk4:25 PM

    That's one fucked-up transportation metaphor, Pegs.
    I came up with a much better one quite awhile back, though instead of involving the luxury automobile you no doubt had in mind, mine involved a bus. It went like this:
    Back in the Reagan era, Evil was driving the GOP bus; Stupid just paid for the gas. These days, Evil is buying the gas and Stupid has taken the wheel. And Stupid is a very, very bad driver; our only hope for getting Stupid off the road before it mows down everything in its path before flipping the bus and taking Evil to the grave with it is for Evil to let the tank run dry (kind of like in that Speed movie or something). Because Stupid is tired of decades of riding in the back, having its pockets picked to pay for the bus to take it wherever suited Evil's fancy, and now it has no intention of relinquishing the driver's seat.
    See, that's how you do a transportation metaphor. Where's my fucking WSJ check?

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  32. LittlePig4:25 PM

    Whad'ya mean 'sorta like'???

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  33. LittlePig4:28 PM

    Yep. Those ol' boys take their half of the road out of the middle.

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  34. I know about Stupid and Evil, but wasn't there a third dwarf, named Malice? Or was that just the ad on the side of the bus?

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  35. Budbear4:33 PM

    Well, only one Taft was President, none of them conspired for a military coup of the gov't,, and , as far as I know, none of them were certifiable idiots.

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  36. BigHank534:37 PM

    Where's my fucking WSJ check?


    Evil has to sign it and then Stupid will put it in an envelope, address it, and give it to the Post Office. What, hasn't it shown up yet?

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  37. Budbear4:37 PM

    Don't underestimate the toilet habits of the Teahadis.

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  38. fraser4:49 PM

    Words cannot say how much this piece and all the comments relaxed me at the end of the work week. Thank you.

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  39. JennOfArk4:49 PM

    Malice is the GPS system.

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  40. DocAmazing5:00 PM

    Does that cast Louie Gohmert in the role of dengue fever?

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  41. sharculese5:00 PM

    A doctor once said a political party is like walking in the desert. You don't know how you come to be there, but maybe you're fed up. The party is a tortoise. It knows where it wants to go, but you flip it over on it's back. Now the turtle is lying on its back, belly baking in the sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. The Tea Party has the means to turn that turtle over, to get it going on its way again. But you're not helping. Why is that?

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  42. DocAmazing5:02 PM

    What is the purpose of a party?
    To provide the opportunity for the placing of lampshades on heads and turds in punchbowls.

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  43. chuckling5:04 PM

    "Driving Miss Crazy." Could work as a sitcom or slasher flick.

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  44. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume5:44 PM

    "You've arrived and you know it."


    With each glance and every little movement you show it!

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  45. Mr. Wonderful6:40 PM

    Were the ears still attached? Oh, go on, say yes. What's the harm?

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  46. GOP hack? I have it on good authority that Dewey defeated Truman. At least, I'm certain I saw it in the newspaper.

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  47. It'll definitely show up one of these Saturdays.

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  48. Mr. Wonderful6:42 PM

    Doesn't it always?

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  49. Mr. Wonderful6:44 PM

    Uh--yeah! Right!

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  50. "What do you mean I'm not helping?"



    "I mean you're not helping."


    "Is the tortoise white?"


    "No."


    "Oh. Well then that's why."

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  51. Holy shit, but this whole little series of comments was a well-constructed joke. Very funny. 9.5 out of 10

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  52. Mr. Wonderful6:51 PM

    "She figures the upstarts want power, just like the Brash Young Comers in
    old movies, and like those characters they will respond to a salutary
    scolding so long as the scold is an old white man in a suit."


    But who can blame her? The old white man in a suit is DAD. Sure, as young upstarts, we want to murder him and fuck his wife, but once we have that out of our system, darn it, we have to admit the old man knows a thing or two. Such as? Well, such as how to start us as a junior exec in his company at 120K per, bennies, car, and all the Post-Its we can swipe. We're upstarts, yeah, but we're not getting any younger.

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  53. By rights the driver should be played by Dave Chapelle, but Chris Rock will probably get the role instead.

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  54. I really can't resist a Blade Runner joke.

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  55. chuckling7:05 PM

    As the driver represents the Republican establishment, I think it would need to be an old white guy with scary gravitas. Perhaps Robert Englund. The passenger, representing the tea party, would of course be the perfect role for Tina Fey.

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  56. TGuerrant7:14 PM

    Googling "Peggy Noonan" dildo gets 28,800 hits. Do not click the "Images" tab. Do NOT.

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  57. coozledad7:39 PM

    The patrolman Blanched when I told him I half expected to find someone's head.


    There at least have to be some very sore people wandering around.

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  58. redoubt7:50 PM

    Except it's dolphins, not squirrels, she sees when she looks outside her window (but they're still married).

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  59. KatWillow7:55 PM

    Give me your address and I'll send you a check, by golly. Not as much as you deserve, but still- your metaphor is brilliant. Maybe "The Daily Show" will use it?

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  60. KatWillow7:56 PM

    Malice is Rupert Murdoch's face. O'Riley, Hannity, Limbag and all the others, too. SCARY.

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  61. klaatu, eisenhower, nixon

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  62. redoubt8:07 PM

    Robert Alphonso Taft? Seriously? "Mr. Republican" himself, Taft School, Yale, Harvard Law who still managed to be the face and voice of small-town, isolationist, 19th century America? Seriously? "Taft-Hartley" Taft? Passed over for Tom Dewey--twice--and Eisenhower Taft? Seriously?


    This is what you get when the absinthe-and-antifreeze cocktails kick in.

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  63. sharculese8:36 PM

    Rule number 1 of comedy is know your audience. This is the internet, so you can just assume your audience (correctly) likes Blade Runner.

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  64. Tehanu9:53 PM

    "She figures the upstarts want power,..." Maybe, but if so, it's only in the service of greed. Give them a million bucks and the next thing you see will be their lazy butts on a beach somewhere. Getting and keeping power would actually require effort.

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  65. mortimer20009:56 PM

    I was lucky to find Jesse Taylor's epic channeling of Noonan channeling Tupac Shakur. Seems perfect here.
    Hit Em Up: What Tupac Shakur might have thought of Paul Wellstone's memorial rally.

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  66. M. Krebs10:59 PM

    Well, god only knows what kind of payback there is for her editor.

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  67. reallyaimai11:04 PM

    They publish Noonan because Sally Quinn makes too much sense.

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  68. reallyaimai11:05 PM

    Or maybe they are drinking buddies and he hasn't noticed the actual texts.

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  69. M. Krebs11:05 PM

    That woman crazy.

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  70. reallyaimai11:07 PM

    I think Palin will work for scale.

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  71. reallyaimai11:07 PM

    Oh god! I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before. Tea Party--you've got spunk. I hate spunk.

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  72. reallyaimai11:11 PM

    The whole thing has the fine, dusty flavor of Miss Havisham's wedding cake if the house had been invaded by the cast of Mad Max and she had come down to serve tea and give them a lecture about common courtesy and waiting their turn.

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  73. RHWombat11:17 PM

    More like Japanese Encephalitis Virus.

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  74. cleter11:58 PM

    Love is all around no need to chase it, Ted Cruz!

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  75. cleter12:07 AM

    NO MORE PARTY! shriek the manimals, as they kill and eat Dr Moreau, and then run, blood-spattered and whooping with delight, off into the jungle.

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  76. DocAmazing12:09 AM

    Are we not Republicans?

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  77. glennisw1:20 AM

    Perhaps it's the half a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc I've had this evening, but nothing that Nooners has to say makes a lick of sense.

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  78. glennisw1:22 AM

    From your mouth to God's (and Jon Stewart's) ear!

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  79. GabrielRatchet1:29 AM

    It doesn't make sense. For roughly the same reason on Ms. Noonan's part.

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  80. mrstilton1:32 AM

    That was the unskewed headline.

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  81. Odder2:15 AM

    Do Not Forsake Me, oh my Darling High Noonan.

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  82. nanute4:38 AM

    No, that's so he has one.

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  83. Smut Clyde4:49 AM

    Christopher Walken.

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  84. Smut Clyde4:50 AM

    Doktorling Sonja was just telling me earlier that I should be listening to "Welcome to Night Vale".

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  85. Another Kiwi5:35 AM

    Look, is it too much to ask that zombie Ronald Reagan turn up in a Nooners scree? I mean Taft is good but he ain't no Ronny with the insouciant shoe and all.
    Maybe the older entomologists in the joint could tell us when mosquitoes started eating pond scum cause, really, that'd be quite useful.

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  86. So, it's gravitas you want? Two words... Fred Thompson. He's got so much gravitas I almost bought a reverse mortgage.

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  87. zencomix10:02 AM

    "Deep down, do you patronize those innocents on the farms, in the hinterlands? Or perhaps you understand yourself to be a fat, happy mosquito on the pond scum that is them?"



    Everyone from Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry deep throats the corndog at The Iowa State Fair. EVERYONE.

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  88. Since this is, after all, the Tea Pugs we're talking about, I'd have expected to find half a head.

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  89. Well, obviously, your problem is you only drank half the bottle...

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  90. M. Krebs10:14 AM

    The best metaphors are always the ones that must be explained in great detail.

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  91. John D.10:26 AM

    "You want to keep the car looking good. It zooms by on a country road, you want people seeing a clean, powerful object. You want to go fast, but you don't want it crashing. You drive safely and try to get to your destination in one piece."
    This couldn't be more unlike the vandals, wild-eyed extremist nutcases, and deliberately destructive wrecking crew that comprise the Tea Party if that was her intent. "You don't want it crashing?" The hell they don't.

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  92. calling all toasters11:32 AM

    "Why not John C. Calhoun?"


    Because Nooners doesn't kiss and tell.

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  93. philadelphialawyer12:00 PM

    "Plus there's this, from 'Taft''s Epistle to the Establishment Men:

    "'Deep down, do you patronize those innocents on the farms, in the hinterlands? Or perhaps you understand yourself to be a fat, happy mosquito on the pond scum that is them?'
    All joking aside, can someone explain to me (I really don't want to get off the boat!) what the heck Noonan is trying to say here? Is she really calling the TP'ers (the farmboy "innocents" from the hinterlands, I presume) "pond scum?" I get asking the question about the Establishment Men patronizing them, but why are the TP'ers pond scum, from her perspective--I know, I know, the TP boys ARE pond scum from our perspective--but from hers? Moreover, if the Tea Partiers ARE pond scum, why does that mean that the Establishment Men are not going to patronize them, even if the Establishment Men are mosquitos who live "on" that pond scum? Why is that the choice? Patronize or understand that you live on them? Why wouldn't it be both....the EM "understand" (whatever that means, in context) that they live on the pond scum, physically, like mosquitos (assuming even that is true: don't mosquitos just live on or in the water itself, until they emerge from their larval stage or whatever?), and also patronize them? Why, at least, can't it be both? And then there is the notion of the Establishment Men as mosquitos themselves. I mean, OK, the EM are "fat, happy" parasites, like mosquitos, but then wouldn't the proper metaphor be that they live OFF the farmboys (the innocents from the farms and hinterlands, aka the Tea Partiers)? Usually, one is not concerned with WHERE the parasites live, in the context of this kind of metaphor, but what they feed ON. In which case, the innocent Tea Party farmboys from the hinterlands should be cows or goats or something, or maybe just farmboys, because mosquitos feed on mammal blood. Not pond scum.

    "I suppose you could say there is genius in it, as there is absolutely no one else on God's green earth besides Noonan who talks this way or thinks anyone else does."
    But does anyone else on God's green Earth even understand what she is saying? I agree that there are no speakers of this language other than Noonan, but have archeologists even deciphered it?

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  94. mgmonklewis5:31 PM

    "If all the Republican Blondes were laid end to end... I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

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  95. RHWombat8:36 PM

    Actually, only female mosquitos feed on blood (and not just mammalian blood) to breed - the male mosquitos do actually live off pond scum. Good to know that entomological reality gets warped just as completely as metaphors in the Noonan cortex.

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  96. bekabot10:12 PM

    "The party is the car. Its institutions, including its most experienced legislators and accomplished political figures, with the support of the people, are the driver. You want to keep the car looking good. It zooms by on a country road, you want people seeing a clean, powerful object. You want to go fast, but you don't want it crashing."

    Okay, I give up, I give up, I give up. "Cruz control." Happy now? I held out, I swear I did, I held out for weeks and weeks and you got me with slo-pitched ball.

    I'm so ashamed.

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  97. I thought you were trying to imitate The Onion but Noonan really is this crazy.

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  98. philadelphialawyer12:25 AM

    Well, no, actually. From what I've read male mosquitos eat plant sap and nectar and also "honeydew" (which is a substance secreted by aphids....yuck!) not "pond scum." Certainly, the sources don't indicate that that is the plant substance of choice even for male mosquitos.

    Also, look at Noonan's exact words..."Deep down, do you patronize those innocents on the farms, in the hinterlands? Or perhaps you understand yourself to be a fat, happy mosquito on the pond scum that is them?"
    There is no indication, as I read it, that she means the mosquitos, male or otherwise, eat the pond scum. They are merely "on" the scum. She doesn't say "a fat, happy mosquito feeding on the pond scum" or "a fat, happy mosquito living off the pond scum." No, she says merely "on," and not in a context where it means "living on" (as in feeding on) but merely as in location. The Establishment Men/mosquitos live on the Tea Party innocent farmers from the hinterlands/pond scum. Just as, say, frogs live "on" water lilies. Or So and So lives "on" Such and Such Street.
    So this brings me no closer to understanding...really, it just makes it more confusing.

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  99. philadelphialawyer12:29 AM

    Well, that explains it!

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  100. montag21:16 AM

    Oh, I think Looney Louie's more like EHF.


    I start to bleed subcutaneously whenever he opens his mouth.

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  101. montag21:25 AM

    A pity-publish?

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  102. montag21:27 AM

    Nothing is too nuts for ol' Ruprecht's new toy.

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  103. montag21:38 AM

    This one sounds as if the accident report should have been titled, "Darwin Award Attempt."

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  104. montag21:52 AM

    Yup. I'm still marveling at "necro-ventriloquist act," because the image of Nooner with her hand up deceased Robert Taft's ass is, well, too good not to savor.

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  105. The party is the car. Its institutions, including its most experienced legislators and accomplished political figures, with the support of the people, are the driver. You want to keep the car looking good. It zooms by on a country road, you want people seeing a clean, powerful object. You want to go fast, but you don't want it crashing. You drive safely and try to get to your destination in one piece."

    Meanwhile, in the real world, the Tea Party is The Cardigans without the sexxay... better yet, the Plasmatics without the badass.

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  106. No shame, just teh funneh!

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  107. Eli Rabett4:35 AM

    For those who remember him there was considerable debate about whether Taft was ever animate.

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  108. I know I shouldn't come back to a dead thread but I like to keep upwith my peeps. The phrase "Stop acting like Little Suzie..." reminds me of SEK over at Lawyer's Guns And Money's line "So jump off the building: you're the fucking batman!" which can be appended, usefully, to almost any sentence or new yorker cartoon. I feel that "stop acting like little Suzie...you've arrived!" might be just such an all purpose addition to any discussion.

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  109. philadelphialawyer10:02 AM

    Plus, who uses mosquitos as a metaphor for human being without meaning the blood sucking female kind? What would be the point of referring to the plant eating male kind? No one associates mosquitos with plant eating, and everyone associates them with blood sucking.

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  110. XeckyGilchrist10:24 AM

    Rule 34 is cruel.

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  111. XeckyGilchrist10:31 AM

    Did you know? Every time someone mentions Christopher Walken in a blog comment thread, he does this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8

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  112. bekabot11:35 AM

    {smile icon}

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  113. whetstone12:37 PM

    If I came to work every day to publish James Taranto (answer to the question "Is it possible to be dumber and meaner than Jonah Goldberg and have a job?") and the aforementioned Daniel Henninger (the Robert Caro of Barack Obama's Twitter feed), Peggy Noonan would be the only thing between me and Bellvue.

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  114. mommadillo12:58 PM

    I firmly believe the Pantload is only published to piss off liberals. It's all tongue-in-cheek, and nobody, and I do mean NOBODY, is dumb enough to take him seriously.


    Except Hoft, of course. And maybe Erickson.

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  115. cleter1:18 PM

    Yes, Republicans. Listen to Peggy. Emulate this stiff, unlikeable guy who's attempt to become president was a complete failure. LISTEN TO TAFT! HE KNOW'S HOW TO NOT WIN NATIONAL ELECTIONS!

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  116. DocAmazing1:24 PM

    Do the"innocents on the farms" know that their establishment betters view themas pond scum?


    Pegs, ya gave the game away,

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  117. DocAmazing1:29 PM

    Life's just Ebola cherries!

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  118. mommadillo1:46 PM

    Sure sounds to me like you smell what the flock is kooking.

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  119. RHWombat4:56 PM

    Forget it, PL, it's a chinese metaphore.

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