Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who was once a Reagan speechwriter and is now a dyspeptic critic of Donald Trump, infuriated leftists on Twitter this weekend with a column about her visit to the Columbia University campus to observe the pro-Hamas protests and attempt to interview some young protesters.
Noonan wrote she understood the youthful passion to protest, but these protesters all wore masks and didn't want to engage with largely supportive media. She found this carried an air of menace...and cowardice. This was the passage that New York Times reporter Peter Baker passed around that fanned the fury:
I was at Columbia hours before the police came in and liberated Hamilton Hall from its occupiers. Unlike protesters of the past, who were usually eager to share with others what they thought and why, these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press, or, as they say, “corporate media.”
I was on a bench taking notes as a group of young women, all in sunglasses, masks, and kaffiyehs, walked by. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” I called. They marched past, not making eye contact, save one, a beautiful girl of about 20. “I’m not trained,” she said. Which is what they’re instructed to say to corporate-media representatives who will twist your words. “I’m barely trained, you’re safe,” I called, and she laughed and half-halted. But her friends gave her a look and she conformed.
Raging kook Keith Olbermann, the man so unbalanced that he tweeted the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe vs. Wade were "domestic terrorists," argued Baker and Noonan were not journalists:
Is there a point at which Peter Baker and Peggy Noonan will understand that vast swaths of America do not recognize them as journalists?
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) May 4, 2024
Hell, if I knew about the "I'm not trained" line I could've gotten Noonan off my back and off my shows in 2004 instead of 2006 https://t.co/2P2OvlX3rt
The Left could certainly argue that college kids might be smart not to sit down with a journalist they don't know, and Noonan could be characterized as an establishment Republican, who wouldn't naturally love radical disorder. Noonan noted they were yelling “Israel bombs, Columbia pays! How many kids did you kill today?”
Lefties were probably angrier at Noonan for suggesting that even liberals in Manhattan were pleased the cops shut this encampment down:
The Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at relative peace with itself and said: Wake up! The Hamas demonstrations come to a country that hasn’t been at peace with itself in a long time. It watched, and thought: More jarring hell from kids with blood in their eyes making demands.
The people of my liberal-left town were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let people clean things up.
