Peggy Noonan is following us

Terry Teachout and Sissy Willis are now following Peggy Noonan on Twitter and vise versa (see below for more). Our Twitter logo above is detail of "a many-colored cotton Ralph Lauren outsourced to India, air-drying in the shade of the Silver Maple, a bumped-up version of the madras plaids that were all the rage in our salad days."

"Two kinds of people," Twitters A-list critic, biographer and blogger Terry Teachout, who blogs at About Last Night:

I'm the kind who straightens up his hotel room before going out to dinner.

That's two things we have in common with the estimable Mr. Teachout — drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and music critic of Commentary — the other being that Teachout and ourselves were the first two, among 194 Twitterers notified this morning that Peggy Noonan "is now following [our] updates on Twitter," to respond by clicking on "follow" at her Twitter site:

We tried explaining to Tuck what it all means but had to admit that we ourselves still don't quite get this Twittering thing. As Karl Rove  — who follows us and 41,197 others on Twitter — was reported to have Twittered when he first signed on last January:

In one Tweet he confesses that he is "no new media ninja" but is being shown the ropes by an assistant, adding: "I like it so far!"

That's about how we feel, minus the assistant. Back to why on earth Peggy Noonan is following us on Twitter, we're probably in her email address book from a brief correspondence we had four years back over our post "Peggy Noonan almost gets it," a critique of her column "The Blogs Must Be Crazy," wherein she proposed that Big Media "get our own bloggers to challenge our work":

Why don't we invite bloggers who already exist into the tent? Why not take the best things said on blogs each day and print them on a Daily Blog page? We'd be enhancing our rep as an honest news organization, and it will further our branding!

As we pointed out in a follow-up post at the time:

… the jury is still out about the integrity of a blogger's being paid by big media to tell it like it is. Probably not possible. Either you is or you isn't my baby.

Checking back with Noonan's Twitter page before going to press, we note that since we started writing late morning, she's up from the initial two —Terry T. & Sissy W. — to 26 followers, and counting. We've got 59 followers after being on Twitter a coupla months. Any takers?

Comments

[Teresa]

So she started up on twitter and didn't even put out an initial tweet? It's like putting up a blog with a blog roll but no posts... unless all she wants to do is follow people on twitter to see what they say - which is fine, but unless she will be tweeting, there's no reason to follow.

I'm always amazed at people who follow thousands! How does one do that? I can't really keep things straight with the few I've got - I am being very discriminating in who I follow now. For that matter there are even some I'm thinking of unfollowing because it's too much!

[Stoutcat]

Hate to be a possible wet blankie, but...

Have you checked this account: http://twitter.com/PeggyNoonan ?

Looks more like it's actually her, tweets look reasonable, and links to her website.

What do you think?

[Sissy Willis]

Interesting question, Stoutcat. The PeggyNoonan without the nyc seems to be simply a compilation of her weekly WSJ columns, and scrolling through her followers, I don't see a single name I've ever heard of. [Yah, so? -- ed]. Peggynoonannyc, on the other hand, while it has zero messages so far, does have quite a few followers I've heard of. [Again, yah, so?] I've emailed the WSJ editors asking whether they can clarify. 'Guess it's just one more example of how murky these www waters can be.