Writing about childhood fears (post-Newtown),
she reveals:
One night when the moon was bright and the wind was moving the trees, I looked from my bed into the shadowed closet . . . and suddenly the clothes and the things on the shelf above had transformed themselves into Abraham Lincoln, in top hat and shawl, staring at me and waiting to be shot. That fear came every night for years. At some point a neighbor saw my nervousness or overheard my obsession, asked what was wrong, came to my house, opened my closet and announced triumphantly "See? Lincoln isn't there!" I knew she meant well, but how dumb can you get? Lincoln only came at night.
She also talks about a child who was afraid of ET, so I was expecting a parade of Spielberg characters tormenting kids: the "Jaws" shark, a T-Rex, TinTin, Oskar Schindler... But here's where she's going with this:
Newtown, like 9/11, reminds us of "the mystery of being alone in the world as it is and as we are." The world is imperfect, broken, "with cracks running through it." A central fact of our lives... is that "We are all vulnerable. Anything can happen to anybody at any time."...
We attempt to respond to tragedies politically.... But there is no security from existence itself. The only answer is to "plunge into" life. "We have to engage in life and take it on with all the risks it entails, or we won't be alive at all."
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20 comments:
I agree with her, it is dangerous to be alive. I'm a high strung person and can understand how parents/people can over react emotionally but if we look at the percentages, facts, we can feel better about our loved ones safety.
The crack in the world is that Reagan's speechwriter voted for Obama in '08.
Too behind the firewall; couldn't read.
Noonan waxes too lyrical lately anyway.
I tried a different link, so see if you can get in now.
Few monsters in my closet.
I knew the Lone Ranger and Tonto were on the job.
Still no access, Professor. WSJ is clever and careful about this.
Noonan is a vacuous, empty-headed 'pundit' who has been dining out on one line from one speech she wrote 20+ years ago.
She has to have a hard drive filled with incriminating photos of the editors and owners of the WSJ because there is no possible way she keeps her job based on her political and cultural insight; she has none.
They want us to pay to read Peggy Noonan ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Tell you what. I'll take this bit and fashion it into a pop-up card, make templates and sell them for a dollar. That way you'll get Peggy Noonan's incredibly perspicacious insights and an idea how to make your own cards. Double the perspicacity you get from a regular Hallmark card at half the price.
The monster in my childhood closet, and everywhere else, was a nuclear explosion. That was the most fearsome facet of the nuclear threat. It could happen any where, any time. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cuban missile crises remember the graphic descriptions of the devastation and death precipitated by a nuclear explosion.
A book I read described a family sitting in the living room watching TV. Suddenly, there was a bright flash in the distance. The people reacted by shielding their faces from the light. The mother held her baby up tight against her face. All were killed by the flying glass from the picture window when the shock wave hit, except for the mother who was protected by the baby and the baby's blankets.
"We have to engage in life and take it on with all the risks it entails, or we won't be alive at all."
I had that nightmare until my late 20s. But, I also learned I can't go around obsessing about the dangers of life or kid myself that we can make the world a safe little nest.
More kids have died via gunfire in Chicago this year than in Newtown. In Chicago it happens every year.
But it's not a pretty white person's Connecticut town, so the danger of life is expected and the national media just looks the other way.
If only li'i Peggy had known that old Abe was there to protect her from vampires...
"That's just people being people in St. Louis." -
Well-spoken man wearing dreds, dispassionately commenting on the morning local news, about an overnight drive-by murder of a 12-year-old girl.
Preppers aren't crazy. Anti-social crazy people are crazy. Can't reason with crazy, so please don't try. Just defend yourself.
"WSJ is clever and careful about this."
Not too clever (hence Noonan): Just google the article's title; it works on most "pay" articles, as it did on this one.
"WSJ is clever and careful about this."
Not too clever (hence Noonan): Just google the article's title; it works on most "pay" articles, as it did on this one.
It's so obvious when a writer is trying hard to be profound but is falling short.
Plain to see here, even if most people would agree with the sentiment.
DADvocate:
"All were killed by the flying glass from the picture window when the shock wave hit."
But remember, Duck and Cover was the dumbest advice ever given by the U.S. government, still hilarious 50+ years later.
I gave up on Noonan for Lent-an, lo, those many years ago.
I'm sorry that this thread is dominated by the dislike for Peggy Noonan, because in this case at least, she said two interesting things. First, the image of Lincoln as a night time boogeyman is intriguing. Second, she is correct that we have to live with challenges and can't solve them through passing laws. Some think that's a cliche, and I suppose it is, but practically all the talking heads, editorial and op-ed writers, letter-to-the-editor writers, and blog commenters talk as though with just the right policies terrible events like Sandy Hook wouldn't happen, and that just isn't true.
More kids have died via gunfire in Chicago this year than in Newtown. In Chicago it happens every year.
But it's not a pretty white person's Connecticut town, so the danger of life is expected and the national media just looks the other way.
A question. Why do blacks look the other way? "Pretty white person's Connecticut town." I can name two neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Bay Ridge and Midwood, one predominantly Italian-American, the other mainly Orthodox Jews. Those neighborhoods are blocks away from killing fields. Guess what? They're safe. Why? The Italian-Americans and the Orthodox Jews don't look the other way. There are frequent patrols even without an incident and when there is an incident the patrols are stepped up and the perp if found is "instructed." The police of course are not happy about these incursions on their turf but a cool truce is maintained and between the police patrols and the civilian patrols the children in those neighborhoods are safe. Which returns me to the question: why do blacks look the other way? Where are their patrols protecting their children in their neighborhoods?
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