Lady Peggy Noonan
Published by Blandus March 2nd, 2006 in UncategorizedEmbarrassing the Angels
Here is that larger fact: America has become creepy for women who think of themselves as ladies. It has in fact become assaultive.
I start with a dictionary definition, from American Heritage, not that anyone needs it because everyone knows what a lady is. It’s a kind of natural knowledge. According to American Heritage, a lady is a well-mannered and considerate woman with high standards of proper behavior. You know one, the dictionary suggests, by how she’s treated: “a woman, especially when spoken of or to in a polite way.” Under usage, American Heritage says, “lady is normally used as a parallel to gentleman to emphasize norms expected in polite society or situations.”
I would add that a lady need not be stuffy, scolding, stiff. A lady brings regard for others into the room with her; that regard is part of the dignity she carries and seeks to spread. A lady is a woman who projects the stature of life.
These definitions are incomplete but serviceable–I invite better ones–but keep them in mind as I try to draw a fuller picture of what it was like to be taken aside at an airport last week for what is currently known as further screening and was generally understood 50 years ago to be second-degree sexual assault.
Thanks, Blandus. I always like reading Peggy Noonan. Such a wordsmith!
Cheers!
Wordsmith indeed.
oh come on, that’s a lame article, the ol’ “things used to be so much better” saw. people have been saying that for thousands of years.
I hate to sound like a cliche liberal or something, but I’d rather live in a society that isn’t afraid to say “masterbation” in front of women than one that stigmatizes single, sexually active women as whores.
not that it has to be one or the other, but this ridiculous good-old-days crap is, well, crap.
oh, and you don’t have to get too fired up at me, because you religious conservatives always win in the end, and patriarcy/ladylikeness will always be with us. its an evoltionary fact. check out this Foreign Policy article. It changed the way I think about everything. seriously. I think when I have kids, I’m gonna raise them Catholic, so they can be on the side of the winners.
Krupa - glad to see we are winning you over. I have seen the article and yes, we will always win. I guess that’s why people have been saying these things for thousands of years. The whores and has-beens always seem to self-destruct.
See also, Roe Effect.
Um, the welfare state sort of cancels out the Roe effect, IMHO.
And I too got a twinge of cliche-dom at the article, but realized that the article is in the larger context in her columns of the failure of airport security and in the even larger context that men and women ARE DIFFERENT.
Whoredom is a matter of degree, as is being a lady. We don’t call men whores because men don’t nest or have babies. Calling men “gentlemen” is only useful as it relates to the subject’s treatment of women (outside a legal cotext).
Lame? Perhaps. She’s beating a dead horse. But she uses such wonderful words!!!
Madness.