I'm kind of a neurotic, self-aware kind of guy, so I can't really conceive of leading an unanalyzed life. Whether I want it to or not, my internal running monologue just keeps going, all day long, picking apart everything I do, breaking it down, considering it and then reconsidering. I wasn't always certain everyone's mind functioned in this way, in fact, but now I'm fairly certain they do. At least, the somewhat intelligent, functional minds.
Clearly, not everyone has this kind of running mental commentary track. Some people say or do the most ridiculous, appalling things and never give them a second thought. They're creature of pure impulse, like squirrels that have somehow grown to human height and mastered some basic English phrases. Many of them, if not most, become politicians, TV pundits or right-wing bloggers.
How else to explain this Noonan post, which I will now cite in its entirety:
Good news for the Bush family:
CRAWFORD, Texas - Is a White House wedding in the works?Jenna Bush, one of President Bush's twin daughters, is engaged to be married to her longtime boyfriend, Henry Hager, the White House announced Thursday.
Asked if the two were getting married in the Rose Garden, Sally McDonough, press secretary for first lady Laura Bush, replied: "They have not set any details, date or place."
Jenna Bush, 25, and Hager, 29, were engaged in Maine on Wednesday, she said.
The two have been dating for several years, and Hager is often seen at Jenna Bush's side at family Bush functions and formal events, such as a White House dinner in November 2005 in honor of Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
Hager will be returning to school this fall to complete his master's degree in business administration at the University of Virginia. He has an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University.
Hager, who has been a White House aide and worked on Bush's re-election campaign, is the son of John and Maggie Hager of Richmond, Va. His father is chairman of the Republican Party in Virginia, former assistant secretary of the Education Department's office of special education, former lieutenant governor of Virginia and former director of Virginia's Office of Commonwealth Preparedness.
We here at Blogs for Bush want to extend our congratulations to this young couple as they start their life journey together. We ask the blessings of God be on this union and that love and happiness be their portion for all the days of their lives.
Note to liberals: This is your chance to just say something nice.[Italics mine]
Can it be that Noonan doesn't realize the ludicrous, self-defeating hypocrisy of this statement? He's a guy who writes blog posts every day and it doesn't occur to him? He's mocking the way his political enemies turn even a happy event into an occasion for criticism and vitriol by turning a happy event into an occasion for criticism and vitriol.
"Hey, liberals, why are you always criticizing us, you lousy stupid jerks!"
I would say he should make swift use of the "stop hitting yourself" defense, but I'm pretty sure that was deemed unconstitutional in the landmark case of Rubber v. Glue. But I'll have to check my files to be 100% sure...
The only other option is that Noonan's aware of the stupidity of that statement but makes it anyway, because it sounds kind of pithy and condescending. And maybe, just maybe, the composition of 100,000 straight blog posts in that exact tone of voice, which would most likely qualify as a new Guinness World Record, is his only real aim in the blogosphere.
Either way, it doesn't reflect well on the man, nor his capacity for rational thought.
And while we're hanging at the B4B, here's a post of Noonan's from today that may very well represent the complete, polar, 180 opposite of a Crushed by Inertia post. Mark Noonan is Evil Lons. Or Bizarro Lons, depending on your preferred division of nerditry.
Later today I shall undergo a colonoscopy - a general look at the innards to figure out a particular problem I have. I ask your prayers that it will all go smoothly and that nothing serious will be found.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy that blog readers don't generally tend to care about the author's physical well-being unless it's extremely dramatic. As in, the blogger is dying. (Preferably dying of something trendy or sexy. I doubt tales of gout slowly leaking away a writer's will to live would drive a ton of readership to a blog, even though I'd probably subscribe to the RSS feed.)
Otherwise, I feel like people who don't know me personally but enjoy my occasional film/political commentary would just as soon I keep that kind of shit to myself. I wouldn't regale my mother with tales of my own colonoscopy, let alone anonymous readers of the Internet worldwide.
Other things Noonan does here that I would not do:
- Ask anyone to "pray for me," adding the caveat "please," as if these sorts of conversational niceties could convince someone who wouldn't do so otherwise to clasp his hands in prayer. "Well, normally I would never do this...but Jesus, can you save Mark's colon? He said please!"
- Refer to a colonoscopy as a look at "the innards"
- Use the terms "colon" and "go smoothly" in the same paragraph without the requisite quotation marks to render them non-disgusting.
Now, and I'm just thinking aloud here, but if you prayed to Satan for things to go really well for Mark, would he then die during this routine procedure? What if a Satanist prayed to Satan? What if a Christian, using reverse psychology, prayed to Satan for things to go horribly awry for Mark? Is Satan too clever for that sort of trick? Maybe...and bear with me here...but maybe Satan doesn't answer prayers at all, because he's completely evil, so praying to him would do nothing but make God angry. BUT if your prayers angered God, maybe he'd do the exact opposite of what you wanted, so praying to Satan that horrible things befall Mark during his colonoscopy would actually have the effect of saving his life!
I'm not suggesting you should really ask Satan to make something go really wrong with Mark's colonoscopy. Really, I'm not. But if you did, it just might save a life...Think about it.
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