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January 3, 2008
I've often thought that the op-eds in the Australian mainstream media were pretty poor. The Fairfax op-eds increasingly drift towards lifestyle infotainment, whilst those in the Australian are written through the prism of the culture wars. Sometimes the recycled overseas op-eds in all our media are even worse.
A good example is Peggy Noonan's 'Let truth and common sense reign in Iowa' in The Australian, which is downloaded from her Wall St Journal column.This is not intelligent commentary by any stretch. It's so bad that one questions the judgements of the Australian's editorial crowd. Partisanship rules therein.
Noonan, who claims to speak for thousands, millions, states what she desires:
This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. That is my hope, what I ask Iowa to produce, and I claim here to speak for thousands, millions. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.
Then she makes a checklist of which presidential candidates are "reasonable" and which ones aren't. Reasonable is not defined. We are offered examples of what reasonable means in political life---Senator Joe Biden a long term United States senator, who has read a raw threat file or two, has experience, sophistication, the long view, and knows how it works. 'Reasonable' for grown-ups refers to "knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."
Noonan then makes this judgment:
Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson are all reasonable: mature, accomplished, nonradical. Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column. John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't. I forgot Rudy Giuliani. That must say something. He is reasonable but not desirable. If he wins somewhere, I'll explain.
Why is Edwards populist agenda re health insurance companies and universal health care intemperate and insincere? Edwards is disqualified because four years ago, he was caught brushing his hair before a television appearance -- "poofing," in Noonan's words, which signifies a male homosexual. So he is not masculine. Not a real man like President Bush. So he can't possibly be President. Only real men can be the President of the US, not faggots.
Oh, by the way Hillary Clinton is not reasonable either. No, its not because she is not a man:
Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.
Isn't President Bush polarizing? Barack Obama just squeezes through the reasonable door, though he's too young and inexperienced to be President. No problems with the Republican candidates though, apart from Mike Huckabee, the Prairie populist.
And this kind of junk represents intelligent commentary by the political and media elite in a national newspaper. We are meant to take this junk seriously? Who is kidding who.
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Gary,
It's entertainment, Murdoch style. We need to be amused as it is the silly season.