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The Danger of Metaphorical Politics. And Football.

by Max Ross   ::   posted on Sep. 08, 2008 - 4:58pm

This made my week. (It's Monday, though, so bear with me.) Back in 1999, the Washington Post had a contest in which readers were asked to submit the lamest analogies and metaphors they could come up with - I believe it's called the ‘Smorked Beef Rectum' award. For whatever reason, the competition was mentioned to me this weekend, and I checked out the shortlist, which is pretty fantastic.

They had to divide the winners into two categories: "Gloriously Bad Analogies" and "Entries That Came Too Close to Actual Literature to Qualify as ‘Bad.'"

My favorite from the latter list:

"The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work."

And some goodies from the ‘Gloriously Bad' file, which will hopefully inspire y'all to check out the whole shebang:

"The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while."

"The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM."

"She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef."

And my favorite (told to me verbally, though I couldn't find it on the site):

"He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree."

All this got me thinking about metaphors in general. By definition, metaphors are larger than themselves - they're like trampolines: we jump on them to jump higher than we can actually jump...yeah. But they can be dangerous, too, especially if one begins to mistake a metaphor for the greater thing it's meant to stand in for.

Currently there are (at least) two entities that people imbue with superfluous meaning.

A) The NFL
B) Politics

Right? People mistake these things for life. I do sometimes (Skol, mofos). If our team doesn't make it to the playoffs, it's the end of the world. If our candidate doesn't get elected, it's, well, the end of the world. (Though in the latter example, there may sometimes be a teensy bit of literal-mindedness involved.)

Nevertheless, I've woken up every day of my life so far just like a breathing human being wakes up, despite myriad Vikings losses, and the fact that I have yet to be the write-in winner for any elected position. Politics and football can be fantastic microcosms for human interaction - and books, too - but they are not the thing itself.

Bringing it together, I find it remarkable how often political speeches are peppered with football metaphors like pepper steaks peppered with pepper, and vice versa. Here's a fairly disturbing example:

Kellen Winslow created a stir Saturday during an angry postgame interview, when, among other things, he said, "It's war. They're out there to kill you, so I'm out there to kill them. ... I'm a soldier."
While Winslow clearly needs to lighten up, it's hardly surprising that a 20-year-old who has heard football coaches repeatedly use inappropriate war metaphors might voice one himself after a tough loss.

And one from the opposite end that's a bit milder (a lot of similar gems on this site):

"For Democrats generally! Always be watching for the fake punt and the misdirection."

The following, which warns against the danger of metaphors in politics, is from "The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf" by George Lakoff, an essay concerning the first Gulf War, but which resonates today like a violin that's been playing resonantly since 1991:

Metaphorical thought, in itself, is neither good nor bad; it is simply commonplace and inescapable. Abstractions and enormously complex situations are routinely understood via metaphor. Indeed, there is an extensive, and mostly unconscious, system of metaphor that we use automatically and unreflectively to understand complexities and abstractions. [But] it is important to distinguish what is metaphorical from what is not. Pain, dismemberment, death, starvation, and the death and injury of loved ones are not metaphorical. They are real and in a war, they could afflict tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of real human beings, whether Iraqi...or American.

Bring it home, Sancho Panza:

"Leaving the question of my being a governor in the hands of God, and may He place me wherever He chooses, I say...that it makes me very happy that the author of the history has spoken about me in such a way that the things said about me do not give offense...each man should be careful how he talks or writes about people and not put down willy-nilly the first thing that comes into his head."