Peggy Noonan became celebrated as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. She writes a column for the Wall Street Journal.
In this article, she skewers Trump’s character. She says he is a weakling.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-woody-allen-without-the-humor-1501193193
“The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.
“He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.”
What happens when this weak and egotistical man is faced with an international crisis? Let us pray.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OMG this is everything that is wrong about Peggy Noonan. She is, was, and will always be a woman who lacks any kind of moral compass. She is completely shallow.
He ignores traditional forms of American masculinity??? Say what?
How about he is a pathological liar who is unable to tell the truth if he believes a lie will help him get what he wants? How about he does not seem to view other people in any way other than “are they helping me get what I want or not”? Including his family.
How about he has a total lack of empathy and does not seem to have an inkling what empathy means?
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Thank you for this comment (as well as Dienne’s below). Noonan is the human equivalent of scraping fingernails on a chalkboard. Whenever she has anything of value to share, it’s more akin to a broken clock being right twice a day. But with her it’s closer to twice in a lifetime.
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Trump is just the logical conclusion of what Raygun gave the country. Noonan fully supported everything Raygun did (and I’ve never heard her repudiate anything either), so I don’t think she has a lot of room to talk now. You can’t spend eight years celebrating “greed is good” and then act surprised and repulsed when you get someone like Trump. If greed is good, then Trump is great.
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No question. Trump is a tool, an arrogant, ignorant, buffoon who lies incessantly about everything.
Like Charlie Pierce said about Noonan, her columns are chock full of “Olympian detachment. Banality as insight. Fairy tales…With a strong element of privileged condescension. I miss anything?”
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I wasn’t going to post that column. Then I saw Lawrence O’Donnell (my favorite news show) quote it.
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I think the point is, that she is getting under his skin. Attacking his masculinity probably has him twisting and turning all night. O’Donnell does this as well .Which is fine by me, because I have been twisting and turning since 11/9 . What makes Trump a danger is not his flaws, it is the philosophy of the party standing behind him.
Yes he is the logical extension of 40 years of race baiting right wing nonsense and the failure of a positive alternative from the Democrats . So if Reagan had his welfare Queens
Bill Clinton solved it, not with a war on poverty but a war on poor women . Barrack came along with an answer for unbridled greed. Appoint a Millionaire to do something about those “greedy geezers” eating too much cat food (Alan Simpson) . So either way I would have been twisting and turning. I have to admit as long as I take a Prilosec this is more entertaining. You just can not make this stuff up . And if his buffoonery interferes with their right wing legislative agenda, I am content to watch the show till 9/18.
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11/18
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Michael Moore is making a new movie called”Fahrenheit 11/9″
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Ed reformers hold planning meeting, neglect to invite anyone who represents a public school:
“For left-of-center education reformers, the proposed Trump budget amounted to a devil’s bargain.
They could support the budget plan, which would give hundreds of millions of dollars to charter schools. But they would have to do so knowing it slashed education spending across the board, including money meant for poor students.
Around 25 leaders talked over the dilemma at a previously unreported meeting on March 16 — coincidentally, the same day the initial budget plan was released. There, former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made a provocative suggestion: charter leaders should refuse to accept federal money designated for charter schools if Trump’s cuts to education went through.”
They had a whole discussion about what to do about the proposed ed reform cuts to public schools and invited only people who run charter schools.
I love this:
“Duncan declined to speak about the meeting, but he reiterated his view to Chalkbeat in an interview.
“If [DeVos] is cutting money for traditional public schools and putting money into charters … I’ve told them not to take the money,” said Duncan. “I think that’s blood money.”
“We all [have] got to be thinking about not just the kids we serve directly, but all kids,” he said.
Apparently no one in ed reform considers themselves as serving kids in public schools.
Good to know since fully half of them are in government, or just came out of government.
Maybe we could hire a private advocate for the 90% of students who aren’t members of this exclusive club. Obviously none of the thousands of public employees we’re paying have time for the “dead end”, “19th century” schools.
It is ludicrous that two former US Secretaries of Education have to beg the “ed reform movement” to consider kids in public schools. They’re literally debating whether to support the kids “they don’t serve”- so 90% of kids.
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Whatever so-called education reformers tell themselves or the rest of us, the term “left-of-center education reformers” is an oxymoron.
They may be conservatives in drag, they may be (neo)liberals, but busting unions and privatizing a bedrock public institution – the sine qua non of so-called reform – is in no way, shape or form “Leftist.”
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This is sad:
“Zimmer: “We have crossed — or are about to cross — a threshold where the loss of revenue to the district as a result of students leaving for charter schools has an effect on the quality of education for families that choose L.A. Unified-operated schools. At the same time, there are still areas where there are legitimate reasons to create new charters.
Steve Zimmer
Steve Zimmer (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
The California Charter Schools Assn. takes the view that students will benefit from an education market in Los Angeles that is about pure cutthroat market share and competition. I disagree and I don’t believe individual charter leaders view the world that way. I believe that charters benefit from a strong public school system to serve the children that charters don’t or cannot.”
He’s talking about the majority of the kids and parents in that city- deemed as standing in the way of the revolution.
Ed reform really had a duty to tell the public that this revolution designated public school kids as the collateral damage. They should have been told the schools their kids attend are being phased out for a new model when “policy makers” and “thought leaders” made these decisions. It’s outrageous to subject to them to this without what is crucial information about The Grand Plan. Switch to a charter or private school. They’re abandoning the schools your kids attend and they didn’t even have the decency to let you in on the scheme.
No one told the “dead end” kids and parents the revolution had occurred.
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In that quote, Chiara, Steve Zimmer has it backwards. Charters exist to educate the kids that public schools cannot.
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Noonan’s column is vacuous, which seems to be business as usual for the Wall Street Journal.
Calling people wimps is what the football jocks did at my high school.
Sadly, this seems to be the mentality of many members of the mainstream media these days (and of much of our “leadership” class as well)
To them, life is just one big football game, with winners, losers, wimps, studs, cheerleaders and all the rest.
These people are like Al Bundy on Married with Children forever trying to relive that championship game of their high school glory days.
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SDP,
Whoa! She didn’t use the word wimp. I did. She said he was a girly man.
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“girly man” is worse than “wimp”. It reeks of the “fag” label the jock types at my school were always quick to slap on any male that wasn’t “manly” enough.
I know there’s a certain satisfying irony and schadenfreude in seeing a man who’s spent his life belittling and emasculating others getting belittled and emasculated himself, but still. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. Just because Trump is juvenile and odious does not mean we should stoop to his level. If anything, it means we need to go the other way. There is a huge crying need for adults these days.
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I would say as a matter of record that Trump is a chicken hawk.
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Well, yes, fair enough. But, in fairness, so were Obama, Bush 43 and Clinton (and Hillary for that matter).
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Wait, I thought Trump was Hitler; this blog and others told me so for months.
Then he was Putin’s go-fer and Manchurian Candidate.
Then he was incompetent and corrupt (talk about a dog-bites-man story!)
I just don’t know what to believe anymore. God forbid I should trust my own judgement and knowledge of history, and double God forbid the Democratic Party should actually fight for concrete proposals that would provide material benefits to everyone… better to just talk about what a Bad Man the President is…
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Sure, just trust your own judgement.
The judgement that told you that Hillary Clinton was so evil and corrupt that if Trump had to run this country to keep her from doing the evil she planned on doing, well, that’s just dandy with you. After all, Trump is not Hitler so that means he’s no more dangerous than Hillary Clinton would be.
And of course, the Democratic Party isn’t interested in concrete proposals and has never fought for them. Ever.
And the people who voted for and still support Trump despite of everything he has said and done since taking office are just “misunderstood” good folks who should be pandered to since they tend to be white and obviously are worthy of our admiration.
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I have heard that 1/3 of those who voted for Trump do not believe that Don Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer. Even when he admitted it, they didn’t believe it.
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Thanks, NYCPSP – I can always count on you to win hearts and minds! Keep it up! (BTW, didn’t you cut and paste that from your rant at me yesterday?)
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“Wait, I thought Trump was Hitler; this blog and others told me so for months.”
I know I should be shocked that dienne77 and Michael Fiorillo have been reading this blog for the last year and all they could focus on was the many — was it millions and millions? — of people whose entire criticism of Trump was “Trump is Hitler”. That was it. I’m sure Diane Ravitch herself was getting tired of the non-stop posting of “Trump is Hitler” and yearning for someone — anyone — to post some real criticism of Trump but there were so many “Trump is Hitler” posts that it drowned out everything else. So many people (like me?) who did nothing but post “Trump is Hitler” over and over again until deinne77 and Michael Fiorillo felt they had no choice but to defend Trump from the non-stop “Trump is Hitler” attacks. In the name of righteousness.
No one except the two of you and a few other rabid Trump defending “Hillary is just as bad” posters were seeing this constant barrage of “Trump is Hitler” posts that have ruined your ability to enjoy his Presidency so it’s fortunate you are out there tracking them.
I’m so proud of you both for doing what’s right and making sure the huge number of “Trump is Hitler” posters who offered nothing more than non-stop “Trump is Hitler” posts are called out for their evilness.
You are really on the side of the angels. I can tell by how hard you are trying to “save” a good and decent man who successful prevented the evil Hillary Clinton from destroying our country. I can tell by how hard you try to save a good and decent men from the huge number of posters on this blog who have so little to criticize our great leader about that they have been reduced to posting “Trump is Hitler” non-stop.
And I believe Kellyanne Conway agrees with your “reality” 100%.
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dienne77,
My job is not to try to win your “heart and mind”. If you can look at everything that has happened since Trump has taken over and are still convinced we should be giving him a chance, then NOTHING I say will ever convince you.
You and Michael have to decide for yourself and it’s clear you have. Don’t worry, there are still plenty of Trump voters out there who agree with everything you believe.
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Not that this is my quarrel, but I feel compelled to answer Michael’s false accusation and characterization. I do not recall any direct comparisons of our Dear Leader with Hitler, but whether there were or not, there is no question that he is a fascist. If you don’t know the difference, then I’ll be happy to provide a reading list. The extreme forms of killing and murder of Hitlerian National Socialism have caused people to misunderstand the basic elements of fascism, as is obviously the case with you. Our Dear Leader’s variant of fascism more closely embodies that of Mussolini (whose style our Dear Leader has obviously studied and often mimics) combined with an American variant espoused by Charles Coughlin with a touch of the boorish pomposity of Huey Long—without the actual accomplishments that actually benefitted masses of people. Our Dear Leader is no Hitler, nor is he a Stalin. But accusing others of calling him a Hitler obscures the reality of his 21st century variant of American fascism that is part of an intellectual tradition which can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century.
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NYCpsp,
You have an ugly habit of putting words in other people’s mouths that they never said; it’s an ugly one, and it just gives you even less credibility than you’d otherwise have.
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I have a habit of reading posts — like the one you made Aug. 1, 1:30pm that began “Wait, I thought Trump was Hitler; this blog and others told me so for months.” and responding to them.
You have a habit of disavowing that the things you post actually mean what they are intended to mean.
In that, you remind me so much of those Republicans trained by Lee Atwater who pretended that comments about “welfare queens” and “Willie Horton” did not mean to be racist.
Perhaps I am too defensive. Perhaps I am concerned when I read dienne77’s willingness to attack Bill de Blasio with the same kinds of “my spidey sense tells me he is corrupt, not a real progressive, let’s do to him what we did to Hillary Clinton and repeat all the nastiest right wing talking points to make sure he isn’t re-elected and if a right winger like Trump gets in, well at least we showed those nasty “corrupt” Democrats what’s what.”
I think Trump is dangerous. I think Trump can do great damage and has already done great damage and we will live with his Supreme Court appointments for decades.
And the constant harping about how much the Democrats have sold out is why Russ Feingold lost to a right wing Republican. It wasn’t Hillary — it was all your beloved white workers who wanted a white right wing republican who would tell those non-whites who were the cause of all their problems what is what.
One reason I liked Hillary Clinton is that she was disinclined to use the easy slogans to close the sale. Guess what? health care is hard. The public option is going to wildly disappoint many people just like Bernie’s supposed “free college for all” would wildly disappoint a lot of people. You can tell the public what they want to hear to close the deal or you can try to tell them about the trade offs so that they understand that you give up some things for other things and that politics is about choices.
I don’t think progressives are well-served in the long run by slogans instead of thoughtful discussion about the pros and cons of different issues. And I don’t think that attacks on Bill de Blasio that mirror the attacks that the same people made against Hillary Clinton are excused by people who say ‘but at least we don’t have that corrupt de Blasio anymore and stop saying his right wing replacement is so bad, he’s just like Trump and how dare you criticize him without coming up with a perfect solution to all our problems.”
I’m sure deinne77 can smugly say that I haven’t “proven” to her satisfaction that de Balsio is not the corrupt Mayor she believes so who cares if we get a right winger to replace him. It’s what she said during the Clinton-Trump campaign and she is repeating the same tired talking points she did all fall. Nothing I can post will change her “spidey sense” and I’m sure she’ll find some negative article to convince her she is right just like she KNEW Hillary’s election would be a disaster even if it did bring us a Supreme Court that was actually liberal instead of conservative.
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