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Peggy Noonan’s recent article at the Wall Street Journal, "America Is at Risk of Boiling Over," makes for an excellent case study in how to construct a pretense of neutrality while actually pushing a partisan agenda.
While appearing on the surface to be a fairly level-headed an politely biased bit of work, in reality it’s just as partisan as any diatribe by Beck, Coulter, or Limbaugh; the only difference is that Noonan’s readers are ostensibly a little smarter than the average Becketable and must therefore be manipulated more subtly.
Let’s take a look at how Ms. Noonan earns her keep.
While giving an outward sheen of measured reason and calm restraint, this article is in reality absolutely loaded with "coded" language, weasel words, subtly partisan phrasing, semantically loaded terminology, and other "dirty tricks" that, when carefully analyzed, belie Ms. Noonan’s clear agenda, her unquestionable disrespect for the intellect of the average person, and the agenda of the folks who write her checks.
Right off the bat, in the subtitle of the piece, Ms. Noonan’s agenda is made clear:
...out of touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off.
Of course, Noonan must be given credit on the one hand for being one of the few notable conservative columnists not to entirely jump on the Palin bandwagon, but at the same time I don’t recall her making any particularly strong objections to the former Alaska Governor’s incendiary campaign rhetoric, e.g. "pallin’ around with terrorists." Indeed, the most prominent Noonan criticism of that over-the-top remark I found was that it was too light-hearted:
If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously.
I know it’s fashionable here and elsewhere to treat Peggy Noonan as though she were a breed apart; here is a rational conservative, the thinking goes; and underlying it, let’s not piss her off, we need her to moderate the kooks on that side. I feel that this is a dangerous letting down of the guard. In spite of Ms. Noonan’s obvious intellect and writing skill, the simple fact is that she is not on "our side," nor has she ever been. She exists – writing in an upgraded op-ed page position in Rupert Murdoch’s New And Improved Wall Street Journal – as a conservative voice pushing a conservative agenda, and we would do ill to forget it.
Here’s Ms. Noonan talking about "Washington" when she clearly means "Democrats" and/or "The Obama Administration." Note how she deliberately avoids using any partisan label throughout the piece in order to make a disingenuous pre-emptive defense against just the kinds of analysis I'm doing now. Look there, we are supposed to think, she's holding the other side to the same standards. Except she doesn’t.
Think: how can any editorial about our risk of "boiling over" completely ignore the firebrand rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, O’Reilly, unless that oversight is intentional. Peggy Noonan is not concerned that some Limbaugh sycophant is going to shoot up an abortion clinic; no, Peggy Noonan’s expression of worry is really just a couple of steps of refinement away from Sharron Angle’s "second amendment remedies." This is not an alarm; it is a subtle threat.
The coded phrases and weighted words come hard and fast now. We have talk of
"the increased demand of all levels of government for the money of the people"
(Tax and Spend!). Then we’re on to
"the growth of cities where English is becoming the second language,"
with this phrase’s implication that the non-English languages are somehow both inferior and beneath us, and English is the only language in which it is possible to have freedom.
Next: reference a Drudge headline...which of course pushes traffic to the execrable, inflammatory content sink that is the Drudge "Report," and exposes the reader to all manner of ignorance and incitement.
Now, make an unfounded and unsupported assertion about what Americans think – as though "Americans" was some unicephalic Borg that is only capable of holding one opinion or point of view at a time.
Invoke the great shining utopia of days past without acknowledging that it was only a utopia for the privileged classes, just as it is now.
Speak of
"too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it"
while ignoring that the people in the cart are, by and large, the ones with all the money...which they took from the people pulling the cart via unregulated capitalism. Of course Noonan's unspoken but clear insinuation is that the people pulling the cart are the privileged affluent elite, who she believes are paying the lion's share of taxes to "carry" the great unwashed welfare masses. They aren't, never have, and never will short of a complete overhaul of the tax code...and when the power elite will kill a bill to compensate 9-11 first responders because it includes closure of a loophole that allows "offshore" companies to avoid income taxes, you can guess how soon THAT will happen.
Notice the feigned reluctance to use loaded language and play semantic games...while doing precisely that. The phrase
"those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America"
is a clear attempt at pandering to the imagined "common man." It’s also an interesting bit of phrasing that belies Noonan's private opinion of that man. They are
"on the ground,"
they are
"what...we’ll call normal."
Noonan, of course, is not on the ground, and she is not "what we’ll call" normal – she is the one who does the defining around here.
See, now, how Ms. Noonan sets up her "common man," stoking his fear and anger against
"the political and media class, the universities."
She then refers to these three groups as
"the country's thought leaders, as they're called."
This phrasing is supposed to lead us to believe that this phrase is self-referential - used BY those "thought leaders" as a label for themselves - but it isn't, or at least it hasn’t historically been. It's a term invented by the editor of a business magazine to refer to those he believed to have business ideas worthy of further attention (http://en.wikipedia.org/...).
Nothing there about politics or media, and the only schools mentioned are business schools. In other words: bastions of conservative capitalist economic theory.
The "thought leaders" who designate themselves such are the people Noonan wants you to believe are the "good guys," but she projects their actions on the 'bad guys" to intentionally leave a bad taste in your mouth about them.
Guess what that means? It means she knows that her "good guys" are really the "bad guys" and she considers it her job to invert that reality in order to preserve power in the hands of those "bad guys"...because who signs her checks? Sure as hell isn't
"those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America,"
now is it?
She talks of a gap and blames "Washington" again. She asserts, in spite of the fact that this administration is far and away the most engaged in on-the-ground issues and least self-deceiving in my lifetime, that this evil "Washington" doesn't
"seem to be looking around and thinking...this nation is in trouble, it needs help."
This in spite of the fact that the entire Obama campaign was predicated on the notion that this nation is in trouble and needs help - why change otherwise? Let us remember that, by definition, it is the conservative wing in the US who wants to maintain the (broken and worthless, IMO) status quo.
Then she goes on to subtly blame the whole mess on the "welfare state," health care reform, and illegal immigrants, smugly assert that
"we're not going to put sobbing children on a million busses"
in spite of the fact that this is precisely what millions of Americans would love to do. Evidence: witness the popular support for the Arizona law, let alone the stated opinions of those Americans on messages boards and in man-on-the-street interviews across the country.
And now, let us wrap the whole thing up: wave the flag with a congratulatory round of self-righteousness, and wrap it all up by suggesting that the way to change all of these negative aspects of life in the US today...is by doing the same broken, screwed-up things we've been doing, with a lead-out of impending doom wrapped around a carefully veiled threat.
This is what passes for objectivity and intelligent discourse in this country. This ham-handed, brute-force manipulation of our fear and avarice is what we call intellectual analysis...and people wonder why we're in trouble? This is supposed to be one of the good guys.
We're in trouble because people like Peggy Noonan are considered leaders and thinkers instead of the fear-mongering carnie hucksters for hire that they are. It may be popular to think of Ms. Noonan as an ally on the other side, an intelligent conservative. To her credit, she’s had some very lucid moments and done some great analysis, and in spite of my own hyperbole and incendiary language in this article I’m sure she’s a very nice person and probably a far sight better at heart than Beck or Hannity.
In spite of that, however, she is still a conservative pushing a conservative agenda at the behest of the same conservative boss to whom Beck and O’Reilly report. She is still guilty of the age-old political tactic of projection – blame the other side for behavior and consequences that rightfully belong on your own. Invoke the evil boogeyman of foreigners and non-English speakers and the welfare state and tax-and-spend liberalism and socialized health care.
Peggy Noonan may be more intelligent, more eloquent, and more careful with her research than your average Right-Wing Talking Heads, but make no mistake about it; she is pushing the exact same agenda as those other guys...and she’s using the exact same manipulative tools to do it.
John "LowGenius" Henry is a professional misanthrope, net.legend, new media superstar, and Renaissance Man 2.0. You can read his other work, see his videos, and share the Genius via his site at LowGenius.Net