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June 30, 2010

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Blogger Sean Trende responds to this post and defends Peggy Noonan's mysticism at:

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2010/06/30/in-defense-of-peggy-noonans-mysticism/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

This post is absolutely correct. You don't need "data" to accurately ascertain that Peggy Noonan constructs her narratives to support whatever argument she wants to advance. You don't even need to read between the lines. Ms. Noonan tackles her subjects from a literary construct, not from data. Whimsical analogies that read like bad movie reviews, with little or no basis in reality, should be challenged. Ms. Noonan is a mere partisan hack whose work is completely indefensible.

Joan Didion wrote about Peggy Noonan's great powers of creating narratives out of her own wishful thinking and need to prop herself up many years ago. I believe it appears in the book After Henry. While it deals more with Nancy Reagan, there are several fascinating pages about Noonan that are quite revealing on this topic.

Peggy Noonan is a propagandist who's working with thin gruel. She posits what she does not because the data doesn't support her actual positions, so she appeals to magic instead. Fortunately for her, she has a certain facility with words and her positions are ones that others want to see promulgated, so she gets to have a nice job. Plus I hear she throws good party, which always helps when dealing with her circle of peeps.

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