June 30, 2013


Peggy Noonan has made a career out of talking like an overwrought, emo-drunken sociopath on the Sunday talk shows in a voice that is extremely caustic to the human ear. Still, all the networks continue to employ her. She was exposed as a fraud on MSNBC when she was caught off air saying how Sarah Palin was not the most qualified pick as McCain's VP in 2008; pining that the race was over and calling her selection "political bullsh*t." Of course, she had a different opinion on Palin when she was live on teevee.

Noonan: It's over. The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullsh*t about narratives and (inaudible) the picture. Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.

She joined Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week and he asked her opinion on Wendy Davis' filibuster of the draconian anti-abortion SB-5 bill in Texas. As usual, she doesn't have a grasp of reality and tries to condescendingly dismiss Davis as some young, spunky woman full of spit and vinegar, but is clearly out of her depth cause she's a baby killer. Wendy Davis is fifty years old.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And it is going to be a big fight; special session of the Texas legislature begins again tomorrow. Let me bring this to Peggy. S.B. 5, a pretty far-reaching bill, would ban all abortions in the state of Texas after 20 weeks, closing most of the abortion clinics in the state of Texas and probably going to pass.

NOONAN: I think it will pass in a -- in a special session maybe on Monday or Tuesday. The aim -- the bill does not specifically try to close abortion clinics; it says they have to meet certain medical standards in order to operate. Here's what -- in the story of this young woman, she's so spirited. You know, she has such energy and she seems to have such commitment.

But it seems to me -- and I think it seems to many Americans -- that what she is speaking for and standing for is something we would recognize as infanticide, late-term abortion, the taking of a little child's life. That is really, really serious. And so part of me thinks that this is a fabulous young woman, and part of me thinks, oh, my goodness, we're celebrating something that even in Europe they call a matter of brutality and barbarism.

EDWARDS.: Well, I don't agree with that.

First of all, words have specific meanings. Twenty weeks isn't a 'late term abortion' and an abortion is not infanticide or the taking of a little child's life. It's still a fetus, not a child and it's still a legal procedure in this country. Using those kind of inaccurate and inflammatory conflation of terms distracts from the real issue that SB-5 is geared to close almost every abortion clinic in Texas, using new health codes as its sword. It will take agency over their own body and give it to the state, creating much chaos, pain and hardship to the women of Texas if this law is passed. Wendy Davis is standing up for a woman's right to choose what she does to her own body and to make sure women have the access to health care services these clinics provide. But Noonan doesn't need no stinkin' facts. She has her phony, condescending empathy.

Abortion is settled law in the United States and Noonan's use of Terry Randall's vernacular only paints herself as an extremist, but you knew that already because she is extreme.

I used Digby's tweet for inspiration:

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