I used to read WSJ just for Noonan — a lyrical, rhetorically beautiful writer with a sound sense of reason. But whatever you think of Donal Trump, she has clearly gone over to the side of the “Never-Trump, self-righteous, elite, expert class who knows better.” Her recent columns in WSJ have been sad. Today’s piece (found here for anyone: https://peggynoonan.com/; or found here at WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-emerges-disunited-but-intact-11611271116?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1) was more of the same. My new favorite read? Most anything from Barton Swaim or Holman W. Jenkins.

Following is my letter to the editors at WSJ written immediately after reading her column:

To the Editors,
It must’ve been difficult for such a fine writer as Noonan to string together so many strained and contradictory ideas in one piece (A-13, Sat/Sun 01/23-24/2021). “A relatively normal inauguration” in a militarized, deserted, walled off Capitol? With Lady Gaga “delightfully freakish”? Nothing normal about her, or her being part of a presidential inauguration. “Everyone [she] knows and every conservative had tears in their eyes”? What? Who is she watching?

Biden, she says, wants to be the “Great Unifier” (with capital letters for goodness sake?); then within hours the new chief executive sent out a raft of divisive, politically leftist, job-killing executive orders and firings? “Good for him” she said . . . just not good for the other half of America. I fear Ms. Noonan has finally and fully displayed that she (along with the “moderate,” so-called conservative, and  “Expert Class” in caps) lives in a Lala Land disconnected from reality or life in the trenches in our diminishingly great land.  


For a dose of Biden-realty I hope Noonan reads the piece from Ms. Shrier directly below on how Biden’s first day in office begins the end of girls’ sports.  There’s a unifier for ya! [that article is found here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066%5D

Most respectfully,
Dr. Michael S. Beates

Winter Park, Fla. 

407-247-5843

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