Maybe I missed it, but when did The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan become America’s den mother? She remembers the repercussions of USA Today’s launch in 1982, when the kaleidoscope daily introduced millions of readers to never-ending charts, very short and perfunctory news stories, ridiculous opinion columns—what serious newspaper, in 1982 and for nearly 20 years after, gives space to a lightweight like the late Larry King?—and sports “nuggets” that didn’t last for two sips of coffee. Most notoriously, at least to me, USA Today popularized the condescending concept of “We,” as is “We Eat More Fish Today Than in 1965.” Noonan, an accomplished and graceful women, probably refrained from comment about the internet’s precursor that was founded by Al Neuharth and owned by Gannett Co.
I don’t think the internet “made everyone dumb,” but it has changed the concept of journalism. On April 30th, Noonan’s WSJ column, keying to the weird “assassination attempt” at the beyond-weird White House Correspondents Dinner (talk about a relic that’s more ridiculous now than even Nobel or Pulitzer Prizes), she begins: “I don’t think we fully appreciate how much of the country is descending into political violence. We aren’t seeing the speed and pitch of the descent.”
Granted, this ultimate “protest”—and it’s an open question whether Cole Allen was acting on his own, like Luigi Mangione and Tyler Robinson—is alarming, especially at a time when most major cities are allegedly seeing a decrease in murders. (The veracity of lower body counts is in question: could be with less police and beat reporters at local precincts some crimes just aren’t reported.) And I believe that “we” are “seeing the speed and pitch of the descent.”
As one would expect—The Atlantic and New York Times’ constant hectoring about America’s loss of democracy has at a minimum subconsciously commandeered the thought patterns of commentators who should know better—Noonan warns that the country’s Constitution and social fabric are in the throes of disintegration. She—and I’m not kidding—thinks leaders of Congress, from both parties, ought to book time on TV “and in simple terms reject violence… Political assassination is a particularly grave crime because it is an attempt to kill democracy itself… [It] is an assault on the constitutional order; we will not have it.” Americans will take advice, and a lecture, from the likes of Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy and Ted Cruz? Sure. And then there’s the controversial Graham Platner (the man who had a Nazi tattoo and other onetime Democratic disqualifiers like minimizing rape), who’s running against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, and if elected, will immediately be hoisted as a “populist” symbol of the New, Extra-New Democrats.
The Times’ scatterbrained Frank Bruni, with requisite “heavy heart,” says he’d vote for Platner if he lived in Maine. He wrote: “The contest—about the balance of power in Congress—pits someone who has never coddled our dangerous president [Platner] against a coward [Collins]. And the costs of such cowardice have risen much too high.” Doesn’t Bruni get a Kangaroo Court hearing for calling a woman “a coward”? Michele Goldberg, in the Times, said after attending a rally for Platner that she “could feel the charge in the air,” and “One attendee likened it to seeing Barack Obama when he first ran for president.”
This Noonan paragraph puzzled me: “Also there are a lot of young reporters covering the White House, and they have the energy and ambition but lack deep judgment and wisdom, and they don’t know history in a way that prompts them to see its healthier templates.” That’s uncharacteristically presumptuous and uncharitable of Noonan—also, given the budgets of media companies, are there really a “lot” of “young” reporters on the White House beat?—since who knows how much “deep judgment and wisdom” they have. It’s demeaning: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, not yet 30, caught a break at The Washington Post, given the initially “nothing” story of Watergate and became famous in the bargain. In the mid-1970s, for The Baltimore Sun, reporters Steve Luxenberg and Mark Reutter exposed the fraud of the local institution The Pallottine Fathers in a series of articles. Neither was 30.
It’s a fair argument that the success of “Woodstein” led to an overabundance of journalists, all chasing prizes. Most sucked. Nevertheless, Noonan’s wrong in slapping young reporters: some know history, some don’t.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023