Especially, this line:

"Who would have taught him to love it...?

Yes, who? Who would have taught him to love slavery, Jim Crowe, Yellow Peril, the genocide of Native Americans, immigration quotas, the legal suppression of labor rights, single-handedly starting the nuclear arms race, the invasions of Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Phillipines, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, and, of course, our finest hour, the financing of right wing central american militants with drug money??!??!??!

Who?

Imagine what the lawn-mower acquisition costs will do to the deficit ...

It will be tanker trucks filled with Nair! Still costly, but without all the OSHA issues.

Brilliant! Maybe we could send the revived CCC in to do the 'finish work'?

These CEO business tycoons wear a paper hat made of colorful glued confetti. It's the same-same hat, and baby-bib attire they wore at the pre-kindergarden graduation. They blow out the party paper scroll horn whistle.

I no make good sense too.

Toot. 'um feed 'us' garbage.

A paper mache corn salad?

Now the insecure brag what?

The GOPS can count up to ten?

Noonan can only count to ten!

However,

Brian, if counting a swinging peg,

can add up digits to count to '11'...

Sure, sitting in church doesn't prove you're religious; you might be thinking about playing the ponies or how that woman in the third pew would look with her dress pulled up over her head or what a droning bore the pastor is, but if you're not in church at all, well people have a right to wonder about you.

Wearing the flag pin doesn't prove anything but not wearing it raises suspicions. This is the essence of Noonan and the right - conformity. Your actions and use of the symbols of conformity may or may not be sincere, but a lack of conformity is the self-indictment that leads others to rightfully demand proof of your various allegiances. "Senator Obama, can you provide us with witnesses and evidence to prove the number of times, if any, when you've gotten misty-eyed over the Wright Brothers?"

And Noonan asks: "But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it..."

Who would have taught him to love it? Were I come from teaching someone to love something is called conditioning and indoctrination.

Brian Williams praise of Noonan's piece is such a perfect layering of smugness, idiocy, condescension, self-promotion, ass-covering, projection of flaws onto competing media- you're right- it has to be read to be believed!

The stupidness of Noonan speaking for the "regular" people she ventured out to meet once, her quasi-racist, (or is it xenophobic?) clairvoyant reading of Obama's internal patriot levels, along with more clairvoyance about McCain's bone-stuffed patriotism- is an embarrassment and how perfect that the guy who spent the week avoiding discussion of the biased Generals his network foisted on their viewers thinks Noonan's fake view of reality is Pulitzer-worthy! And to put the cherry on top- Williams attacks the newspaper that uncovered the scandal Williams won't talk about! You just can't make this stuff up.

You may encourage people to let the lawns grow. William Timberman will but a honey pony tale.

Readers will begin to limber up the old hitchhike thumb. A Greyhound bus ticket is too expensive.

When you appear here, some readers stretch out a sore thumb, get it limbered up, and head for the state of Ohio.

You embrace anti-war.

Great.

You wear a conical beretta bonnet.

I hope the garden is lush in bloom.

...reminded me of the 'Casa Bonita' South Park episode:

---

Cartman: (wearing a nice sweater) Hi Kyle.

Kyle: That isn't it, Cartman.

Cartman: What isn't it?

Kyle: That's not being nice! That's just putting on a nice sweater!

Cartman: I.... don't understand the difference.

---

That's the lapel-pin and ribbon-magnet set's view of patriotism.

Brian Williams praise of Noonan's piece is such a perfect layering of smugness, idiocy, condescension, self-promotion, ass-covering, projection of flaws onto competing media- you're right- it has to be read to be believed!

The stupidness of Noonan speaking for the "regular" people she ventured out to meet once, her quasi-racist, (or is it xenophobic?) clairvoyant reading of Obama's internal patriot levels, along with more clairvoyance about McCain's bone-stuffed patriotism- is an embarrassment and how perfect that the guy who spent the week avoiding discussion of the biased Generals his network foisted on their viewers thinks Noonan's fake view of reality is Pulitzer-worthy! And to put the cherry on top- Williams attacks the newspaper that uncovered the scandal Williams won't talk about! You just can't make this stuff up.

Exactly. It's layer upon layer upon layer. To be honest, there are about 12 more updates I want to add, because the more I think about it, the more hideousness is revealed to me, but I'm just restraining myself because it's still relatively early in the day and, really, how much can one bear?

Who the hell watches the evening news anyway? Who's even home at 6:30 regularly?

The newspapers may be losing circulation numbers, but their websites (particularly NYT) are terrific. (They just need to figure out how to make more money off of them.) They are increasing their video content dramatically, so that the future seems pretty obvious -- a whole lot less TV news and a whole lot more news in every format delivered via the internet.

Frankly, I trust what I hear and see a whole lot more when it is being read by a real "reporter" than by a self-important anchor.

The thing about Williams that has always most bothered me is that he doesn't merely spew forth establishment-friendly pseudo-analysis in his various pundit appearances, but that he appears to take himself seriously in this capacity, yet at the same time doing so with a certain mock world-weary irony and condescension that he appears to think makes him even more serious and commanding. It's like he's saying "Hey, look at me, I'm spewing forth nonsense but in an ironic way, which makes my nonsense not only serious but brilliant, and if you don't get it, then you're a fool!". It's like he sees himself as a Stephen Colbert, but one who tries to be both "straight" and ironic at the same time. Except that one, he's no Stephen Colbert (let alone Jonathan Winters or Charles Grodin, masters of this genre), and two, he's a supposedly serious news anchor and pundit, not a professional comedian, who is supposed to be reporting and commenting on the actual news in a serious manner, not making fun of it. He appears to believe that he has the moral right, not to mention talent, to turn serious news coverage and commentary into some cross between post-modern abstract theater and The Daily Show. I'm serious! No, I'm just kidding! No, I'm serious! I'm both! I'm neither! Hee hee I'm so clever!

What he either doesn't get, or gets, but doesn't mind, because he's making so much money and is a celebrated figure at the center of today's establishment media society, is that he's actually neither a good journalist, nor a good pundit, nor a good ironist (and I offer that he wouldn't try so hard to be the latter if he didn't suck so much at being the former). Like most of the rest of his fellow establishment media stars, he is a self-parodic buffoon, who in his pathetic attempt to co-opt the (rightly) anticipated mockery of his particular brand of buffoonery, by half-heartedly mocking himself, only succeeds in further showing what a massive buffoon he really is, not unlike the way that Bush does this on a regular basis by supposedly making fun of himself (e.g. Where's the WMD?). He is an ass on so many levels, it's literally not funny, the journalistic equivalent of making a concentration camp oven joke and thinking that it's ok because you're just joking, and not getting why it's not funny.

These buffoons' only potentially saving grace is that they're so deeply immersed in their own self-created artificial world that, like the cult members that they essentially are (albeit ones making a lot of money and living very materially comfortable lives), they are literally incapable of seeing themselves as they really are. But I suspect that many of them are smart and sane enough to see through the bullshit. And in their attempts to deal with it, we get this sort of transparently phony self-mockery that the likes of Williams regularly dishes out. But Versailles mocking Versailles is still Versailles. They just can't put lipstick on this pig, try as they might. The problem, though, isn't Versailles' citizens, but Versailles itself. Possessing as much power and money to influence opinion as it does, and with so much power and money at stake, it cannot, and will not, ever do its job properly, including reporting on how it cannot, and does not, do its job properly. It can only pretend to do so, which is literally what it does.