Irony alert! Peggy Noonan is suddenly concerned about civility
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
Poor Peggy Noonan, she's fretting about how our TV and media-based culture has become so course, so vulgar. And yes, she's pretty sure who's to blame: liberals.
“Truly, 2009 was a bad year for public behavior,” writes Noonan in her WSJ column as she bemoans the way East Coaster behaved so badly in public this year. “Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago?” Noonan asks.
And no, the name “Glenn Beck” does not appear anywhere in Noonan's column.
Hypocrite. Because did civility-obsessed Noonan dedicate one column this year to denouncing the name-calling sewer that Fox News has become? Did she ever call out Rush Limbaugh for the incessant hate that anchors his show? Did Noonan ever take issue with AM talker Michael Savage for the way he rallies his listeners around the idea that Obama is “raping America” with Nazi-like policies? Did she demand that Glenn Beck retract his claims that Obama is a racist, communist, fascist, and socialist?
Not that I ever saw she didn't.
In fact, last summer when the GOP mini-mobs were storming public forums, marching around with Swastika signs, brandishing loaded weapons, and hanging politicians in effigy, Noonan played dumb. Noonan whitewashed the unprecedented embrace of violent rhetoric and announced the mini-mob members were simply “concerned” citizens. That the mayhem was just “democracy's great barbaric yawp.”
And yet by year's end, the previously silent Noonan is bemoaning how liberals have acted poorly in public this year. Gimme a break Peggy. If you don't have the courage to take issue with your political pals in the face of their, at times, barbaric behavior, than you have no standing to lecture the left.