Oh The (Unintentional) Irony

I was thinking about my George Clooney-Peggy Noonan post last night ("How hacktacular was it?" "Who did I offend?" "Do people now think my wife sits around all day in sweatpants watching soaps? -- um, no, that would be me.") and I suddenly realized how ironic this sentence of Noonan's was:

"Orson Welles was an artist. George Clooney is a fellow who read an article and now wants to tell us the truth, if we can handle it."

First of all, Peggy writes articles for a living. So, if she's gonna start slamming people for getting their information from articles, well, she might as well hang herself now.

Second of all, Orson Welles, like Clooney, skipped college (actually, Clooney at least tried college until realizing it was not for him).

And third: Well, let's talk about Peggy's hero, Ronald Reagan. Surprisingly, Ronnie did attend college, a little place called Eureka ("A liberal arts and science institution, affiliated with the Christian Church") where he "studied economics and sociology, played on the football team, and acted in school plays" (not exactly the fancy-schmancy education that the Pegster received). From there, Reagan "experienced life" by becomming first a radio announcer and then a Hollywood movie star -- kind of like George Clooney, but without the talent.

So, to paraphrase Peggy:

Orson Welles was an artist with a high school education. George Clooney is just some Hollywood schmuck who never went to college and thinks he can spout his head off like some educated intellectual just because he read something in the newspaper. And Ronald Reagan? Well, he was no artist. But he did go to a small college where he "rarely studied and earned mediocre grades, but was 'Big Man on Campus' as leader of numerous clubs and sports groups." And then he became a Hollywood schmuck and starred in some 53 mostly awful movies. While Welles was writing, directing and starring in Citizen Kane, Ronnie was acting in the mostly forgettable Million Dollar Baby, The Bad Man, International Squadron and Nine Lives are Not Enough (talk about quanity over quality). This more or less unstellar career, with the exception of the "heroic" Knute Rockne All American and Bedtime for Bonzo made him the perfect man to become president of the Screen Actors Guild which, of course, made him uniquely qualified to become Governor of California as well as the 40th President of the United States (the only American President, by the way, who had been divorced).

Peggy credits her beloved Reagan as the man "who changed the world" and wrote that "he was a nobody who became a somebody in the American way, utterly on his own and with the help of millions." Huh? Nevermind. The point is that other than the fact that George Clooney's father was famous and Reagan's was not, their backgrounds are not that much different. It remains to be seen whether Clooney will ever run for office (he'll probably never get divorced, however, since he seems intent on remaining a bachelor forever), but it would seem that, at least in Peggy's jaundiced eyes, George is completely unqualified to have opinions so we shouldn't ever take the dear boy seriously. But Ronald Reagan? Well, I think this paragraph of Noonan's speaks volumes about how sick and twisted her worship of this Actor really is:

...in middle age, he was visited by a dream in which he was looking for a house. He was taken to a mansion with white walls and high sparkling windows. It was majestic. "This is a house that is available at a price I can afford," he would think to himself. And then he'd come awake. From the day he entered the White House for the first time as president he never had the dream again.

Excuse me. I have to stop now so I can remove the bile that's stuck in the back of my throat.