Idiot Peggy Noonan editorial
In Thursday's Wall Street Journal (August 28), Peggy Noonan wrote the following:
"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally; it has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases." [Boldface text is mine]
Now consider the same passage with a minor edit:
"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases."
Did the passage really lose any of its meaning about the difficulties of holding Obama's acceptance speech in Invesco Field? No.
What the passage did lose was a gratuitous linking of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. "It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally" suggests that Obama's speech at Invesco Field was the equivalent of Hitler's 1934 speeches during the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg (captured for all eternity in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of the Will).
Noonan makes her living with words, so this reference was no mistake.
And, it's inexcusable. To equate the first African American major party candidate for president with a madman who ordered the extermination of millions of people is not just over the top -- it's totally irresponsible.
Ms. Noonan owes Barack Obama an apology, and she owes us some time off from her column until she re-learns what the boundaries of fair political discourse are.
"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally; it has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases." [Boldface text is mine]
Now consider the same passage with a minor edit:
"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases."
Did the passage really lose any of its meaning about the difficulties of holding Obama's acceptance speech in Invesco Field? No.
What the passage did lose was a gratuitous linking of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. "It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally" suggests that Obama's speech at Invesco Field was the equivalent of Hitler's 1934 speeches during the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg (captured for all eternity in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of the Will).
Noonan makes her living with words, so this reference was no mistake.
And, it's inexcusable. To equate the first African American major party candidate for president with a madman who ordered the extermination of millions of people is not just over the top -- it's totally irresponsible.
Ms. Noonan owes Barack Obama an apology, and she owes us some time off from her column until she re-learns what the boundaries of fair political discourse are.
posted by Rod Carveth at 5:55 AM
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