Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin Jealous
 |
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. But it's not the normal kind of jealous, the kind reserved for girlfriends who can squeeze into size 2 jeans. No, it's the kind of jealous that hurts, that grabs your gut and twists, that has you howling with rage into your pillow in the middle of the night, screaming "It's not fair" like a two-year-old denied another piece of cake. It is Sarah Palin jealous...and it is consuming you.
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You are a card-carrying
member of the intellectual conservative elite, a PBS-anointed expert on family
values who worked for both Ronald Reagan and Dan Rather, a talented
speechwriter and wordsmith. And you are fuming: Sarah Palin refuses to be
yesterday's news. You just can't get her out of your mind.
And, what's worse, everyone continues to talk about her. You've tried everything, using your mainstream media platforms, your Wall Street Journal columns, and powerful friends -- so many of them -- to savage her, to give her a rhetorical beating so fierce that it would bring a smile to the face of Vince McMahon -- if you knew who he is, and if you had ever watched a WWE wrestling match, which he heads. "She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon," you wrote, your $300 manicured fingers shaking on the keyboard.
And, what's worse, everyone continues to talk about her. You've tried everything, using your mainstream media platforms, your Wall Street Journal columns, and powerful friends -- so many of them -- to savage her, to give her a rhetorical beating so fierce that it would bring a smile to the face of Vince McMahon -- if you knew who he is, and if you had ever watched a WWE wrestling match, which he heads. "She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon," you wrote, your $300 manicured fingers shaking on the keyboard.
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. So you loosed a
multi-column primal scream: Palin is an idiot who is "out of her depth in a
shallow pool", a woman who has no sense of personal limits because she is not
even smart enough to realize she is "a ponder-free zone." Whoa-good one! The
rhetorical equivalent of the
chickenwing camel clutch, where you come up behind
and twist her arm behind her back, and then force her face to the mat. Or, in
her case, to the snow. That's what they have in Alaska, don't they? You don't
know, of course-Martha's Vineyard is about as far north as you venture, and
then only to
observe humanity-you know, the common folks-from "a
little pier" before strolling over for dinner with two of the more brilliant
stars in your friends firmament, television personalities Diane Sawyer and
Katie Couric.
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You pal around with
Sawyer and Couric, Jane Fonda, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin -- the world is your
aging oyster -- and The New York Times (which is sort of
iffy on your writing) admires you for the company
you keep. The Manhattan and beltway salon denizens love you. Brian Williams
even said he'd
nominate you for a Pulitzer, calling your writing "sparkling."
Yes, THE Brian Williams, He Who Anchors NBC News, who had an audience with
President Obama, to whom he
bowed when leaving.
You hang with the grandees, and they understand the world. Unlike Sarah Palin, who uses a pier simply to fish and wouldn't know a winsome observation if it jumped into her net. And you just don't understand the crowds, the admiration for someone who owns the kind of fishing boat that is not equipped with a champagne cooler. Oh, the unfairness of it all!
You hang with the grandees, and they understand the world. Unlike Sarah Palin, who uses a pier simply to fish and wouldn't know a winsome observation if it jumped into her net. And you just don't understand the crowds, the admiration for someone who owns the kind of fishing boat that is not equipped with a champagne cooler. Oh, the unfairness of it all!
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You don't understand
it. Sure, maybe she has accomplished a few things (like the $26 billion dollar
natural gas pipeline
deal, restructuring Alaskan government, and taking
an ice pick to corrupt politicians). But she has no style, no pizzazz -- she
just does stuff. But so do you -- and you can't understand why you don't get
the same adoration. After all, didn't you go before the New York Landmarks
Preservation Commission and not just protest, but elegantly
protest -- so said The New York Times -- a 16-story
tower a developer wanted to build in your ritzy Upper East Side Manhattan
neighborhood? Sarah Palin wouldn't have done that; she's not brilliant enough
to understand preservation. She probably would have looked at the jobs the
construction would create and given it a déclassé "Hell yeah!"
But you're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. Why didn't you get
acclaim for your accomplishment? You're every bit as go-get'm as that baby
mama from the tundra. You went before the commission hand-in-hand with actor
Kevin Kline and Woody Allen -- just a couple of guys from the ‘hood -- and
protested this outrage. You looked those preservation commissioners in the
eyes, and quoted Prince Charles. Yes, THE Prince Charles, of Princess Diana
fame, who -- you told them -- once called a facelift for the National Gallery
in London ''a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant
friend.'' Can you imagine Sarah Palin resisting with such elegance?
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You don't understand
it: Sarah Palin has never stood in front of bulldozers with Kevin Kline, and
yet they cheer her. And she wouldn't stand anywhere near Woody Allen, who
she'd probably insist register as a
pedophile. The assorted celebrities -- neighbors all
-- cheered your courage in noting that your wealthy
enclave, filled with the best and brightest, did not
need a building that was the equivalent of low-income housing, what with units
starting at a mere $7 million. Talk about slumming.
You called attention to how the new construction would block the sun on Woody Allen's nearby $24 million mansion, not to mention annoy Robert De Niro and Jerry Seinfeld, as if they weren't annoyed enough by the notoriety given to the neighborhood by the television hit Gossip Girl. Not in my backyard! Workers of the Upper East Side unite -- you have nothing to lose but your carbuncle! And so the developer agreed to a smaller building, more a boil than a carbuncle. Success! Take that, Sarah Palin, you "bulls**t" outsider!
You called attention to how the new construction would block the sun on Woody Allen's nearby $24 million mansion, not to mention annoy Robert De Niro and Jerry Seinfeld, as if they weren't annoyed enough by the notoriety given to the neighborhood by the television hit Gossip Girl. Not in my backyard! Workers of the Upper East Side unite -- you have nothing to lose but your carbuncle! And so the developer agreed to a smaller building, more a boil than a carbuncle. Success! Take that, Sarah Palin, you "bulls**t" outsider!
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You do stuff, too --
and yet all you hear is Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Don't they read your
columns, don't they understand that she's "dropping
her G's," that she is "faux down-home, patronizing-and infantilizing"? You
have ten, maybe a hundred times the vocabulary she has, and yet they're
talking about her. Don't you read my columns, people!? She is a
"dope and unqualified," representative of "a new vulgarization" and still,
they talk about her.
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You started a new venture, "The Women on the Web" website, a very conservative, free-enterprise thing to do and still you are not appreciated. They talk about the Palin family fishing business-big deal. Anyone can get a couple of fish -- just call Leonards' on Third Avenue and they will deliver. But Palin is not the only savvy executive type. You got together with your closest friends, all the kind of women who, unlike Sarah Palin, live in the real world where women wear "Channel jackets" and "long, flowing pants with heels," and understand life, as Reuters noted, "on a level that goes beyond the mundane."
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. Your "beyond the mundane" co-founders -- "buds" as the Sarah Palin types so crassly put it-for your new venture are the essence of your kind of middle America: they include "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl; actresses Candice Bergen (actress, Democratic and Planned Parenthood spokesperson), Whoopi Goldberg (dropped by advertisers after a nasty Bush joke at a Democratic fundraiser and then hired by The View, a Barbara Walters talk show on ABC ), and Marlo Thomas (a major Democratic donor who is married to Bush-hater Phil Donahue), your type of conservatives, which puts them a bit to the right of Hugo Chavez. But after a year the audience is less than 20 percent of what you defined as success, your investors are worried, and the same women who pack Sarah Palin rallies are ignoring your venture, which features such pieces as "Michelle Obama's Scintillating Style" and "French Fashion Designers Churn Out Stylish Burqhas." What is wrong with this country? Isn't anyone a real conservative anymore? Don't they listen to you? Can't they read without moving their lips? You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. And, worst of all, Sarah Palin is not. Stuart H. Schwartz, Ph.D., is a former newspaper and retail executive. He is on the faculty at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.