So Glenn Greenwald got his knickers twisted over Peggy Noonan’s column today, which attempted to distinguish the “reasonable” candidates from their “unreasonable” competition:
John Edwards is not reasonable. . . . .[W]e can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.
To which Greenwald responds:
So Peggy Noonan is a “grown-up.” She goes on ABC News and MSNBC and writes for the Wall St. Journal in order to opine and is widely respected by our media elite as a mature political commentator. She knows that “the next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days.” America therefore needs a President with “knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world.” John Edwards, however, is disqualified, because four years ago, he was caught red-handed brushing his hair before a television appearance — “poofing,” in Noonan’s words, which isn’t really a word at all, but rather, a British epithet for a male homosexual — “Slang: Disparaging and Offensive” — a synonym for “faggot.” Noonan is making the same point Ann Coulter made: Edwards can’t possibly be President because he’s a faggot. And to make her “grown-up” case for this, she cites one of our national media’s most talked-about political stories of both 2004 and again in 2007: Edwards’ brushing of his hair.
Is Greenwald reading too much into Noonan’s choice of words? Dan Collins at protein wisdom think so, and he offers a number of examples that would seem to back up his charge. Personally, I’m agnostic–maybe Noonan was questioning Edwards’s manhood. Regardless, this is a most welcome opportunity to trot out that YouTube sensation. Without further ado, John Edwards poofing:
HT: Instapundit
