• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Everybody saw this coming.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The revolution will be supervised.

This blog will pay for itself.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

No one could have predicted…

Second rate reporter says what?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / The hunchback in the park

The hunchback in the park

by DougJ|  January 19, 201111:16 am| 52 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute

FacebookTweetEmail

My sister, apropos of nothing, just sent me this crazy Peggy Noonan quote from 1992. I assumed she had seen it on Wonkette since that is her only source of news (I consider this very wise), but I couldn’t find it there.

The life of people on earth is obviously better now than it has ever been — certainly much better than it was 500 years ago when people beat each other with cats. This may sound silly but now and then when I read old fairy tales and see an illustration of a hunchbacked hag with no teeth and bumps on her nose who lives by herself in the forest, I think: People looked like that once. They lived like that. There were no doctors, no phones, and people lived in the dark in a hole in a tree. It was terrible. It’s much better now.

I agree with the sentiment here (and I realize she’s kidding obviously), but it is very strange to me that this sort of “historical analysis” (Noonan’s columns nearly always contain something like this) is the kind of thing that official Washington thinks is deserving of Pulitzers.

It’s amazing that in this so-called information age such a huge amount of our discourse — not just the Beck/Palin part of it but the serious, respectable part — is driven by reminiscences of hunchbacks, magical dolphins, nonexistent Applebee’s salad bars, Stagger Lee-style cab drivers, and so on. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why this is so. Bob Somerby’s been at it for ten years and he doesn’t seem to have gotten anywhere with it. It’s probably something for anthropologists of the future to sort out.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Conservatives Win Again
Next Post: What if Sarah Palin were black? »

Reader Interactions

52Comments

  1. 1.

    Morbo

    January 19, 2011 at 11:20 am

    In Soviet Russia, cats beat each other with people!

  2. 2.

    shortstop

    January 19, 2011 at 11:25 am

    This discourse also completes ignores the reality that most of humanity still does live like that.

  3. 3.

    eemom

    January 19, 2011 at 11:27 am

    Bob Somerby’s been at it for ten years and he doesn’t seem to have gotten anywhere with it.

    While true, this strikes me as an almost comical understatement of the plight of poor Somerby.

  4. 4.

    kindness

    January 19, 2011 at 11:28 am

    The spirit version Peggy Noonan (that shadow her soul casts) is actually a toothless warty old hunchbacked hag. Is that a coincidence or what?

  5. 5.

    twiffer

    January 19, 2011 at 11:28 am

    if you hadn’t told me who wrote that, i would have chalked it up to dave barry.

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    January 19, 2011 at 11:30 am

    Arrogance + Stupidity = American Exceptionalism

    Divide by color and you get Manifest Destiny.

  7. 7.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    January 19, 2011 at 11:31 am

    Was this a “quit your whining” to get GHWB reelected? Seems like it. The modern version being “you can go to an emergency room, so quit asking for healthcare.”

  8. 8.

    cmorenc

    January 19, 2011 at 11:32 am

    @DougJ:

    Simple. We like to read the works of people who are very good storytellers, with the ability to vividly word-paint images of scenes and people with smoothly flowing, not overly verbose prose.

    Mark Twain, for example.

    Peggy Noonan is hardly the equal of Mark Twain, but whom would you rather read: some techo-accurate wonk, or Mark Twain? BTW: Paul Krugman DOES have the ability to accurately frame economic issues in vividly flowing writing that intelligent lay people can understand, and he DID win a Nobel Prize. Admittedly, it wasn’t for anything he wrote in any of his newspaper columns, and it wasn’t a Pulitzer prize.

  9. 9.

    Aredubya

    January 19, 2011 at 11:34 am

    Sounds like a less funny version of Louis CK’s masterful Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy.

  10. 10.

    Alyson

    January 19, 2011 at 11:34 am

    Anthropologists of the future will likely be working from a dark hole in a tree.

  11. 11.

    jonas

    January 19, 2011 at 11:36 am

    So she looks at a Victorian, or later, woodcut depicting a (presumably medieval) old crone of some kind and thinks this is possibly a historically accurate representation of the elderly in premodern times? (Lets out long, low whistle)

  12. 12.

    DougJ DougJson

    January 19, 2011 at 11:36 am

    @cmorenc:

    Mark Twain would be relegated to an obscure blog in today’s world. He would also be held up as an example of the kind of intemperate rhetoric that is destroying our nation.

  13. 13.

    Martin

    January 19, 2011 at 11:37 am

    This may sound silly but now and then when I read old fairy tales and see an illustration of a hunchbacked hag with no teeth and bumps on her nose who lives by herself in the forest, I think: People looked like that once. Hey, Peggy Noonan has been around a long time!

    I don’t really believe that, but Peggy deserves it for being so fucking stupid.

  14. 14.

    cleek

    January 19, 2011 at 11:39 am

    metaphors. people understand them.

  15. 15.

    JGabriel

    January 19, 2011 at 11:40 am

    DougJ:

    It’s amazing that in this so-called information age such a huge amount of our discourse—not just the Beck/Palin part of it but the serious, respectable part—is driven by reminiscences of hunchbacks, magical dolphins, nonexistent Applebee’s salad bars, Stagger Lee-style cab drivers, and so on.

    How could you possibly forget to include Palin’s observation that political rhetoric is so much better now than it was in the day’s when people dueled each other?

    .

  16. 16.

    shortstop

    January 19, 2011 at 11:41 am

    @jonas: I believe that the crone of the woodcut is yet another of Peggy’s hamhanded attempts at girlish insouciance. She’s convinced she’s adorable.

  17. 17.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    January 19, 2011 at 11:41 am

    A) I absolutely love the line “much better than it was 500 years ago when people beat each other with cats.” That’s just funny, I don’t care who you are.

    B) The thing is, I, too, often maintain that life is better now for a whole lot of people than it has ever been in history (one columnist at the Chicago Tribune, it might have been Eric Zorn, once compared the average American middle class lifestyle to that of a European king 200 years ago, with the unsurprising conclusion that we have it much, much better) — but it’s not really all that hard to do the research to support that conclusion! Honestly, numbers are entirely our friends here, even if you do hate elitist educations!

    Why look, I did just that, right here, on the eve of 2011! http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/the-suckage-of-human-history-on-the-eve-of-2011/

    One needn’t look at drawings of hags in the woods to understand how far we’ve come. It’s enough to look at 259 men and boys killed in a fire.

  18. 18.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    January 19, 2011 at 11:42 am

    A) I absolutely love the line “much better than it was 500 years ago when people beat each other with cats.” That’s just funny, I don’t care who you are.

    B) The thing is, I, too, often maintain that life is better now for a whole lot of people than it has ever been in history (one columnist at the Chicago Tribune, it might have been Eric Zorn, once compared the average American middle class lifestyle to that of a European king 200 years ago, with the unsurprising conclusion that we have it much, much better) — but it’s not really all that hard to do the research to support that conclusion! Honestly, numbers are entirely our friends here, even if you do hate elitist educations!

    Why look, I did just that, right here, on the eve of 2011! http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/the-suckage-of-human-history-on-the-eve-of-2011/

    One needn’t look at drawings of hags in the woods to understand how far we’ve come. It’s enough to look at 259 men and boys killed in a fire.

  19. 19.

    srv

    January 19, 2011 at 11:46 am

    I read this and it makes me wonder how her friends at Goldman Sachs feel about the tiny bonuses of yesteryear.

  20. 20.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    January 19, 2011 at 11:47 am

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Sorry, double posted. Hopefully the delete request worked!

  21. 21.

    scav

    January 19, 2011 at 11:47 am

    well, it’s not like they expect the likes of us to understand anything unless it comes enveloped in a pretty pretty story and accompanied with a pat on the head and a nice cup of cocoa.

  22. 22.

    BR

    January 19, 2011 at 11:48 am

    There were no doctors, no phones, and people lived in the dark in a hole in a tree. It was terrible.

    Not to be a downer, but we’re headed back to this in some ways.

    While Orlov is worth reading on this, the real thing to consider is that we’re at the Limits to Growth (here’s their baseline scenario from their 30-year update in 2004):

    http://www.energybulletin.net/image/uploads/40217/stateoftheworldlimitsgrowth.jpg

  23. 23.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    January 19, 2011 at 11:48 am

    @cleek: Yes, and I am a big fan of trusting your readers, but at the same time, one can sprinkle in the occasional hard and fast fact, because the point she’s making is a rather measurable one.

  24. 24.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    January 19, 2011 at 11:51 am

    This may sound silly but now and then when I read old fairy tales and see an illustration of a hunchbacked hag with no teeth and bumps on her nose who lives by herself in the forest, I think: People looked like that once. They lived like that.

    Thinking about it a bit more, does she not understand that we always make the villains ugly. The orcs in LOTR, for example.

  25. 25.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    January 19, 2011 at 11:53 am

    @cmorenc: It’s possible to write flowing prose and tell a good story that leans on fact. It’s possible to do that and even employ metaphors (h/t cleek). If you’re writing nonfiction about a measurable reality, throwing in verifiable facts is actually a very helpful thing — it can even still be funny.

    That’s what I spent six years of commentary writing attempting to achieve, with a certain amount of success… but then, Peggy Noonan is still writing, and I’m ghosting op/eds for nonprofits and PR firms, so maybe she’s got something right that I don’t understand.

    Or she knows how to turn a phrase but also worked for Reagan so will always have a job, and I’m just an embittered casualty of the constant shrinking of print.

    One or ‘tother.

  26. 26.

    WyldPirate

    January 19, 2011 at 11:56 am

    @eemom:

    While true, this strikes me as an almost comical understatement of the plight of poor Somerby.

    Ahhh, Somerby. He puzzles me. Raging at the insanity of our failed press corpse, he became the Sancho Panza of the Internet age of gazing at the Beltway foolishness. Finally he is driven mad like Quixote by it all from calling the play-by-play in spittle-flecked prose.

  27. 27.

    srv

    January 19, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    worked for Reagan

    Peggy has made an existence being America’s Trickle Down Essayist.

  28. 28.

    rickstersherpa

    January 19, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    The way stupidity is awarded in our media culture is positively amazing (See Gregory, David). I think the movie Idiocracy is really a documentary.

  29. 29.

    scav

    January 19, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    Another of those look what’s in the æther zeitgeist moments: A manifesto for the simple scribe &mdash my 25 commandments for journalists by former Guardian science editor, letters editor, arts editor and literary editor Tim Radford. Two chosen not entirely at random but within spitting distance.

    7. If in doubt, assume the reader knows nothing. However, never make the mistake of assuming that the reader is stupid. The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader’s intelligence.

    17. Metaphors are great. Just don’t choose loopy metaphors, and never, never mix them. Subs on the Guardian used to have a special Muzzled Piranha Award, a kind of Oscar of incompetence, handed to an industrial relations reporter who warned the world that the Trades Union Congress wildcats were lurking in the undergrowth, ready to dart out like piranhas, unless they were muzzled. George Orwell reports on the case of an MP who claimed that the jackbooted fascist octopus had sung its swansong.

    ETA: Don’t miss some of the early 20s. “The consequence of non-release of one particular subject ethnic population could result ultimately in some kind of algal manifestation in the main river basin, with unforeseen outcomes for flora and fauna, not excluding consumer services.”

  30. 30.

    ThresherK

    January 19, 2011 at 12:16 pm

    @kindness: Shadow? I thought you just caught a look at her portrait in an attic somewhere.

  31. 31.

    Paul in KY

    January 19, 2011 at 12:17 pm

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: It is a good line. Makes me think of the crazy cat lady in The Simpsons. Ms. Noonan can write at times.

  32. 32.

    aimai

    January 19, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    @BR:

    They lived in a whole in a tree? Does she think that the fifteenth century was peopled entirely with leprechauns?

    aimai

  33. 33.

    aimai

    January 19, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    @BR:

    They lived in a hole in a tree? Does she think that the fifteenth century was peopled entirely with leprechauns?

    aimai

  34. 34.

    kindness

    January 19, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    @ThresherK: Dorian Noonan eh? That’s a protrait I don’t want to see… ever. Maybe drag it out on Halloween to scare the kids.

  35. 35.

    Benjamin Cisco

    January 19, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    Dan, Nooners made a funny. That was actually, you know, funny.

  36. 36.

    FlipYrWhig

    January 19, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    Sounds like Noonan didn’t have an idea for her column that week, but was eating a package of Keebler cookies.

  37. 37.

    bfein

    January 19, 2011 at 12:32 pm

    Getting news from Wonkette–not such a bad idea!

  38. 38.

    aimai

    January 19, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    Argh. Double post. Misspelling. And unoriginal observation. A trifecta.

    aimai

  39. 39.

    somethingblue

    January 19, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    Wait, people in 1511 beat each other with whannow?

    No, never mind.

    Sometimes it’s best to just keep on walking.

  40. 40.

    THE

    January 19, 2011 at 12:59 pm

    There were no doctors, no phones, and people lived in the dark in a hole in a tree. It was terrible. It’s much better now.

    “Mud hole? Slimy? My home this is!” – Yoda
    ‘Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

  41. 41.

    tomvox1

    January 19, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    It’s amazing that in this so-called information age such a huge amount of our discourse—not just the Beck/Palin part of it but the serious, respectable part—is driven by reminiscences of hunchbacks, magical dolphins, nonexistent Applebee’s salad bars, Stagger Lee-style cab drivers, and so on.

    You forgot earnest pants-wetting about tackling the scary debt bogeyman by fucking over middle class and poor retirees present and future (as espoused by The Most Respected and Serious Blogger EVAH):

    [Obama’s polling bump is] real – and I hope doesn’t lead to complacency or excessive caution on the debt. I’ve repeatedly argued that Obama needs to embrace Bowles-Simpson, or a variation thereof, and challenge both parties to come to a long-term budget deal he can sign.

    And forgive me in advance for linking this drivel but it’s a nice reminder that there’s nothing all that “moderate” about Sully once pot legalization and gay rights are removed from the mix. Two highly personal and self-interested examples of empathy do not a moderate make…

  42. 42.

    Mark S.

    January 19, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    Towards the end, Nooners makes another pretty big historical error. After a paragraph of talking about how great America is (seriously, does any other country spend so much time patting itself on the back?), she writes:

    We do not teach this as a society and we teach it insufficiently in our schools. We are more inclined to teach that Columbus’ encounter with the Americas produced, most significantly, the spreading of venereal disease to their innocent indigenous peoples.

    No, the indigenous people probably gave Europe venereal disease. Europeans gave the indigenous people smallpox, which killed unknown millions of them. Thanks for playing, Peggy.

  43. 43.

    catclub

    January 19, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    Is the title a reference to The hunchback in the Park … with George?

  44. 44.

    catclub

    January 19, 2011 at 1:31 pm

    @THE: Well they told us, it was: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. ”

    Yoda probably has a nice condo now – since the swamp was Florida, right?

  45. 45.

    cckids

    January 19, 2011 at 1:53 pm

    @rickstersherpa:

    I think the movie Idiocracy is really a documentary.

    It would be a doc only if the ending revealed that somewhere was a cadre of the super rich, living their entitled, intelligent lives, using the labor of the masses, laughing their asses off.

  46. 46.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    January 19, 2011 at 2:07 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Sounds like Noonan didn’t have an idea for her column that week, but was eating a package of Keebler cookies.

    lolz.

    I suppose we should bow down and thank God that she didn’t have a sudden craving for Beef Jerky and Slim Jims. Who knows what sort of essay that would have produced?

    OK, now I’m hungry.

  47. 47.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    January 19, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    @cckids:

    It would be a doc only if the ending revealed that somewhere was a cadre of the super rich, living their entitled, intelligent lives, using the labor of the masses, laughing their asses off.

    I think H.G. Wells handled that scenario pretty well in The Time Machine. So just watch both movies back to back, and we’ve got you covered.

  48. 48.

    DougJ DougJson

    January 19, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    @catclub:

    No, a Dylan Thomas poem.

  49. 49.

    PurpleGirl

    January 19, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Noonan sold her soul for wingnut welfare.

  50. 50.

    bcinaz

    January 19, 2011 at 3:40 pm

    People used to live in trees, in a fairy forest?

  51. 51.

    torpid bunny

    January 19, 2011 at 3:49 pm

    Nooners has a long, well documented history of bons mots written while apparently hammered.

    Plus, I reject the default assumption that wildly uneven material progress has made everyone’s life better. Paleolithic people worked a hell of a lot less than we do.

  52. 52.

    Mark S.

    January 19, 2011 at 4:14 pm

    @torpid bunny:

    That’s a good point. I also like how the couple billion or so people who live in total abject poverty in the Third World are never taken into account by the cheerleaders of progress. I doubt their lives are any better than people living 500, 5,000, or 50,000 years ago, and in some ways it’s much worse.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

2023 Pet Calendars

Pet Calendar Preview: A
Pet Calendar Preview: B

*Calendars can not be ordered until Cafe Press gets their calendar paper in.

Recent Comments

  • Math Guy on Is Our Democrats Learning? (Jan 31, 2023 @ 3:21pm)
  • lowtechcyclist on Is Our Democrats Learning? (Jan 31, 2023 @ 3:20pm)
  • Martin on Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Here, There & Everywhere (Jan 31, 2023 @ 3:16pm)
  • BigJimSlade on On The Road – BigJimSlade – Hiking in the Alps, Chamonix and Grindelwald 2022 (Jan 31, 2023 @ 3:15pm)
  • CliosFanBoy on Is Our Democrats Learning? (Jan 31, 2023 @ 3:14pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Favorite Dogs & Cats
Classified Documents: A Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup

Front-pager Twitter

John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
ActualCitizensUnited

Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice   

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!