Posted 4:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Blackballed?
In her last three Wall Street Journal columns, Peggy Noonan hit the trifecta of silliness when it comes to silly commentary. Two weeks ago, she argued, against all evidence, that Bill Clinton was “lazy.” Last week, she argued, despite all of the evidence in the 2000 (s)election, that George W. Bush was liked because “[w]hen you know a man doesn't have to win, you know he probably won't do anything to win. And when you know he won't do anything to win, you feel more secure in letting him win.” (click here for a good lampoon of the column). . However, I noted how the Journal editors allowed many harsh critiques of Noonan’s article in the online response section (see my 5/10 post). So today when Noonan wrote about how pundits on the left “fight meaner” than the nice guy pundits on the right, I thought I would write a short letter to see if the editors would publish it. Here is what I submitted:


Paul Begala can fight his own fights so I’ll let him answer Noonan’s claim that, in a battle of wits, someone like Ann Coulter “could eat her lunch off Paul Begala's head and use his tie as a napkin...” I’m just amused with Noonan’s argument that Democratic operatives like Begala and James Carville are effective because they “see politics as total war” but their Republican counterparts are nice guys who don’t. A content analysis of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page over the last decade would clearly show the absurdity of this argument. During the Clinton years, the WSJ’s editorial page was a repository for every crackpot conspiracy theory and smear about the Clintons that a paranoid billionaire could devise—and bankroll. Contrary to Noonan’s argument, the American right fears Begala and Carville—to the point of threatening to boycott their TV show—not because these two believe in “fighting meaner” (it’s odd that Noonan provides no specific examples of this supposed meanness). Rather, Begala and Carville do their homework and offer a forum to debate issues on even terms. This is anathema to people who are used to operating unchallenged through talk radio, through dirty-tricks operations (such as the Arkansas Project or “Troopergate”), or through the use of attack ads with “subliminable” messages.

Despite the large number of people whose responses were printed, my letter was not one of them.