Why is this woman allowed on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Saint Ronnie Reagan's speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, Peggy Noonan aka the "Nooner," the one who wrote those speeches for Ronnie about how "I didn''t know nuthin' bout no arms to Iran for hostages!", and "I didn't know nuthin' bout no Oliver North running an illegal war in Nicaragua out of the basement of the White House!," has been slipping from reality into dementia for quite sometime now, just like Saint Ronnie, but the "Nooner" has completely lost touch with reality this week.

As Hunter wrote at Daily Kos this week, Peggy Noonan takes a turn in the conspiracy theory funhouse:

Leave it to Peggy Noonan to chew the scenery on this one. She'd like you to know that the president is "not unconnected" to IRS mismanagement and the FBI fetching AP phone records because of leadership osmosis. She also is fairly certain that the IRS business is some sort of Orwellian scheme to oppress conservatives, which would be fine and all if that's what happened.

This is what the "Nooner" wrote in the the op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal this week, This Is No Ordinary Scandal:

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. . .

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

Wow, really? The conspiracy theory world where conservatives are perpetually being persecuted for their whacky beliefs by the big bad government and "librul" media meme again? "We're all persecuted and martyrs for Christ." This is what the conservative media entertainment complex cult is going with?

First of all, "the worst scandal since Watergate"? The "Nooner" conveniently leaves out of her op-ed any mention of the Iran-Contra scandal, which is odd because she was there. She also fails to mention the Bush-Cheney regime's unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, and their illegal wiretapping and "sneak peak" searches of American citizens, and their war crimes for illegal torture, rendition to black site prisons, and indefinite detention of prisoners. As I recall, the "Nooner" was an apologist for all these illegal actions. In her desire to present conservative agitprop, the "Nooner" has lost any sense of perspective or fairness.

Secondly, the "Nooner's" line that "The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you," is essentially the speech that she wrote for Saint Ronnie Reagan that I mocked above. Pot, meet kettle.

The "Nooner" is a regular panelist on ABC's This Week Sunday bobblehead show, but today she was a guest on NBC's Meet The Press Gregory. Now, there is no finer example of a Beltway media villager than David Gregory, but to his credit, he wasn't going to take any of this crap from the "Nooner" today.  Gregory Points Out Noonan's Iran-Contra Omission in Scandal Mongering Op-Ed:

So just how overblown does your scandal mongering and false equivalencies have to get before they're even too much for NBC's David Gregory to stomach without some push back? Peggy Noonan found out this Sunday on Meet the Press, after writing an op-ed this week which called these trumped up "scandals" the media has been fixating on "the worst Washington scandal since Watergate."

As Gregory pointed out to Noonan, the administration she worked for well after the Watergate scandal had that pesky little problem called Iran-Contra that she somehow forgot to mention in her article. Of course, reminding her about St. Ronnie's problems didn't seem to phase her one bit:

GREGORY: Peggy Noonan, you wrote something this week that really struck me in your column on Friday. And I want to put it up on the screen and ask you about it. “We are in the midst,” you write, “Of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. [The IRS and AP scandals] have left the administration’s credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don’t look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.”

I have to say, Peggy, what you don’t talk about here is an administration for a man that you worked for who led the Iran-Contra scandal where they ran a secret war and lied to Congress and all the rest. Over-- overstatement here?

PEGGY NOONAN: I don’t think so. I think this is-- what is going on now is all three of these scandals makes a cluster that implies some very bad things about the forthcomingness of the administration and about its ability to at certain dramatic points do the right thing. And I got to tell you, the-- you-- everyone can argue about which of these things is most upsetting, but this IRS thing is something I’ve never seen in my lifetime. It is the revenue gathering arm of the U.S. government…

GREGORY: Peggy-- Peggy, wait a second.

NOONAN: …going after political…

GREGORY: Richard Nixon specifically directed people to investigate to audit people. I mean, of course, we’ve seen it in our lifetime.

NOONAN: Understood but [but, but . . . ]

It is clear that the "Nooner" has no problem lying her ass off and will keep right on lying even when she is caught red-handed doing agitprop. So why is this woman allowed on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows? She has no credibility. Do these so-called news shows have no standards for their guests? (You don't need to answer that.)

The editorial board of the Washington Post, which includes that has-been Bob Woodward sitting next to the "Nooner" in the video above, who is openly hostile to President Obama, had a retort to this conservative agitprop in an editorial opinion the other day. Obama a new Nixon? Oh, get serious. Matthew Dallek writing at the Post is equally dismissive. Rough times for Obama? Sure. But Nixonian? Please.

Nate Silver took apart the "Nooners" other fanciful assertion that conservative were being targeted for IRS audits. "Some conservatives allege that the I.R.S. also targeted individual taxpayers, but a handful of anecdotal data points are not worth much in a country of 300 million." Audit Allegations Show a Flawed Statistical Thinking.

Comments

[Christopher Memminger]

Why is McSenile always on Sunday talk shows when he has lost all credibility?

[Bess1919]

Cokie Roberts is another that needs to get dropped from her "Monday morning news analysis" on NPR. She tries to seem impartial but always parrots RW talking points and never supports a D position.
It would be nice to see her contract ended and given to Katrina
Vanden heuval.