Pink Elephants just doesn’t cut it
We have referred to them as hand-wringers and such in our time but Esther Goldberg writing at American Spectator has a current-classic appellation for the likes of George Will and Peggy Noonan. Oh the way she takes them apart. Excerpted here, read the entire article.
The Pussycons Fret About Donald Trump
The hanky-clutching, cluck-clucking, tsk-tsking faction of the Conservative movement is in for a rough and bumpy ride over the next four to eight years.
They’re the ones who wanted a Republican president who looked like the male manikin on top of the wedding cake. You know, like Mitt Romney. And who were shocked when they got one who wore a baseball cap and spoke with a Queens accent. Like Al Capp’s S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything), they are perpetually offended by everything Donald Trump says and does. By the fact that he simply exists.
I call them the Pussycons. They’re demanding a prissiness from Republican politicians, a refined politesse that distinguishes them from the swinish multitude. For George Will, you had to be able to imagine him “in an Iowa living room, with a macaroon in one hand and cup of hot chocolate balanced on a knee.” A George H.W. Bush, dangling a tea cup. Or a Mitt Romney, so much more elevated than his 47 percent of “takers.”
For Peggy Noonan, the archetype is Jimmy Stewart, “modest” and “respectful.” He would be Ransom Stoddard, the well-meaning fellow who went wobbly and was unable to shoot when facing off against Liberty Valence, the small town’s scourge. Instead she got John Wayne, who played the outlaw Tom Doniphon. Never mind that it took the latter to get the job done.
The analogy to the plot of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has considerable merit. Liberty Valance as the lawless law of the moment Democrat party, The Duke as The Donald, imperfect but get-the-job-done as he is. It breaks down some with George Will as Stoddard (Will has not been well-meaning or contrite of late — Stoddard honored the man who shot Liberty Valance). Whatever the corrective nuances, Esther Goldberg’s article, and many of the posts to the comment section, are worthy.
Now delight in the Gene Pitney song set to the movie trailer. The man who shot Liberty Valance . . . He was the bravest of them all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-sjvz6YKnQ
