Last night I had an argument with Balk (he is like the Dalai Lama of Gawker Media*) re our favorite prose stylist Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Balk said Peggy Noonan's whole "struggle" over what presidential candidate she was supporting had, like everything else she writes, been a total fraud designed to adhere to a premeditated narrative arc whereby she would eventually come around to the Republican side duh. I said…something else, I was drinking. Anyway, now we know what Peggy intended to be the culmination of said narrative arc: a return to something called "patriotic grace" in a nation consumed by a "mood of change" and "tired of the old partisan divisions and the campaign tricks that seek to widen and exploit them." Apparently "the stresses and divisions of the Bush years have driven us apart to a point that is unhealthy and destructive"!! What an unexpected change of heart last week, Pegs. [Harper Collins]

*I know, what about Choire, you ask? Maybe he is the Aung Sang Suu Kyi, except that Emily is the one who is into Buddhist stuff these days I hear, and meanwhile Pareene is the real Panchen Lama and I am trying to be Benazir Bhutto. Hahaha and the funny part of this is that I wouldn't have thought up any of this had Denton not told me to "add context to explain who Balk is" and "in general write for a larger audience."