Because Peggy Noonan is a complete toolbox, she likes to make up rules of propriety based on her own political partisanship and scold those who don’t conform to her improvised decisions. So Noonan, who still believes we live in a 50-50 country–more like 53-47 and counting, Peg–was “disquieted” by something as innocuous as the First Lady appearing by video at the Academy Awards. Because the country is tired of Michelle Obama after four years, but, you know, we need more of Peggy and her weak-headed narratives after 30 years. From Noonan’s most recent Wall Street Journal column:

“Mrs. Obama’s presence reached its zenith, one hopes, Sunday night at the Academy Awards when she came on, goofily star-struck military personnel arrayed in dress uniforms behind her, to announce the Best Picture award. It was startling and, as she gave her benediction—the movies ‘lift our spirits, broaden our minds, transport us to places we can never imagine’—even in a way disquieting.

This would not be an accidental assertion of jolly partisan advantage. It seemed to me an expression of this White House’s lack of hesitation to insert itself into any cultural event anywhere. And this in a 50-50 nation, a divided nation that in its entertainments seeks safety from the encroachments of politics, and the political.

I miss Michelle Obama’s early years, when she was beautiful, a little awkward, maybe a little ambivalent about her new role, as a sane person would be. Now she is glamorous, a star, and like all stars assumes our fascination.

It can be hard to imagine after four years in the White House, whichever party you’re in, that people might do all right for a few minutes if they’re free of your presence. There’s a tendency to assume you enliven with that presence, as opposed to deaden with your political overlay.”

Sometimes, for medical reasons, I need to make my brain bleed, so I read something Peggy Noonan has written. Her blend of insipidness and dishonesty always does the trick. Nonnan is one of those Republicans who clings to false narratives, of an America that never quite existed. She does so in the face of overwhelming facts, despite her party losing almost every battleground state in the last Presidential election. 

Noonan contnues to traffic in the usual bullshit ofnot accepting that her extremist, racist party wants nothing to do with the leadership of an African-American Democratic President, that the modern GOP is about disqualifying anyone who isn’t one of them. 

She writes in her most recent grab bag of bullshit:

“We are living in the age of emergency—the economy, the Mideast, North Korea, Iran. The president has an utter and historic inability to forge a relationship with Congress.”

Why have you repeatedly turned down the friendly overtures of Mitch McConell, Mr. President? He wants to be close. And when they scream at you during the State of the Union Address, it’s dinner invitations they’re offering. The problem is the Republican-controlled Congress is the result of extreme gerrymandering. They’re not just out of step with the President, they’re out of step with the country. Hence, they’re incredibly low approval ratings. Those numbers are truly historic.

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But far more troubling in the same column is Noonan’s embrace of Dodge’s “So God Made a Farmer” ad which ran during the Super Bowl. It’s an impressive spot, until you stop to think about it–if you stop to think about it. It’s largely a paean to the work ethic of white people that conveniently forgets that farms and plantations in this country had much of their toil done by non-white slaves and non-white migrant workers. (Was there a Mexican face in that commercial?) What’s even more appalling is that Noonan wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, whose policies were devastating to small farmers. Wreck them and then use them as a metaphor. That’s been the GOP playbook for more than three decades and cling they still do even though the decentralization of communications and shifting demographics have put their ridiculous narratives to bed.

Peggy explains why she loves the ad so much:

“• Because it spoke un-self-consciously in praise of certain virtues—commitment, compassion, hard work, a sense of local responsibility. The most moving reference, to me, was when Harvey has the farmer get up before dawn, work all day, and ‘then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.’ Notice the old word ‘town,’ not ‘community’—that blight of a word that is used more and more as it means less and less.

• Because it explicitly put God as maker of life and governor of reality, again un-self-consciously, and with a tone that anticipated no pushback. God, you could say anything in Paul Harvey’s day.

• Because it was Paul Harvey, a great broadcaster and a clear, clean writer for the ear, who knew exactly what he was saying and why, and who was confident of the values he asserted. He wasn’t a hidden person, he wasn’t smuggling an agenda, he was conservative and Christian and made these things clear through the virtues and values he praised and the things he criticized.

•You could like him or not, but you understood that by his lights he was giving it to you straight as he could.”

As straight as he could wasn’t very straight at all. It was a false myth, one that was exclusionary and meant to flatter a certain segment of the population that wanted to cling to power. Peggy Noonan is one of those people.•

Peggy Noonan, an astrologer of politics, is always reading the tea leaves or some such bullshit. Luckily for her, she’s employed in an industry that doesn’t penalize for a lack of accuracy or modest writing talents.

You see, Noonan, that armchair generalizer, thinks that President Obama is divisive. It’s not that the recent vintage of her party disqualifies as all-but-traitorous anyone who deigns to lead the opposition party (Bill Clinton, John Kerry, etc.) or that a large wing of the GOP is extremist and/or racist. The Republicans are desperate to be led by our first African-American President, to come up with sensible bargains and compromises. The current Congress is made up of just such moderates. But that bad Obama guy refuses their largesse and chooses instead to outwit them and create drama.

From a recent Wall Street Journal column in which Noonan interrupts her love of pronouns for, oh fuck, some fantasy-land conjecture:

“After the past week it seems clear Mr. Obama doesn’t really want to work well with the other side. He doesn’t want big bipartisan victories that let everyone crow a little and move forward and make progress. He wants his opponents in disarray, fighting without and within. He wants them incapable. He wants them confused.

I worried the other day that amid all the rancor the president would poison his future relations with Congress, which in turn would poison the chances of progress in, say, immigration reform. But I doubt now he has any intention of working with them on big reforms, of battling out a compromise at a conference table, of having long walks and long talks and making offers that are serious, that won’t be changed overnight to something else. The president intends to consistently beat his opponents and leave them looking bad, or, failing that, to lose to them sometimes and then make them look bad. That’s how he does politics.

Why? Here’s my conjecture: In part it’s because he seems to like the tension. He likes cliffs, which is why it’s always a cliff with him and never a deal. He likes the high-stakes, tottering air of crisis. Maybe it makes him feel his mastery and reminds him how cool he is, unrattled while he rattles others. He can take it. Can they?

He is a uniquely polarizing figure. A moderate U.S. senator said the other day: ‘One thing not said enough is he is the most divisive president in modern history. He doesn’t just divide the Congress, he divides the country.'”