Excerpt
Where would politicians be without the Titanic? As metaphors go, it’s far more majestic than putting lipstick on pigs or pit bulls.
Farmyard bacon and junkyard dogs may come and go but in the world of political rhetoric the Titanic sails on. The most famous shipwreck in modern history is the mother of all metaphors. Just last week, at a rally in Tampa, Florida, Hillary Clinton declared, “Anybody who believes that the Republicans, whoever they are, can fix the mess they created probably believes that the iceberg could have saved the Titanic.”
A political cartoon shows the President at the helm, yelling, “I’m king of the world!” as the mighty vessel plows into bergs labeled “Deficits,” “Unemployment” and “Foreign Policy.” Democratic strategist Paul Begala writes, “Selling the old Bush line in this economy would be like trying to sell tickets for the return trip on the Titanic after it sank.”
And, of course, there are infinite variations on the notion of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or buying new ones, as metaphor for wasting time on a trivial task as disaster looms – an especially apt image when it comes to politics, Congress or virtually any government agency. Heckuva job, skipper.
When it’s functioning well, government is often referred to as a ship of state (See Longfellow: “Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great!”), so when it veers perilously off course, comparing it to the well-known leviathan that slipped beneath the waves nearly one hundred years is a logical skip of the stone. Titanic is an iconic symbol of hubris, a manmade behemoth built in defiance and brought low by a random natural phenomenon. “God Himself could not sink this ship,” sneers the villain in the James Cameron movie and at that point, even if for some unlikely reason you weren’t aware of the outcome, you know for sure that this is not going to end well.
Humankind’s ability to help bring calamity down upon itself is what makes Titanic such a powerful image, especially as we face the growing immutability of what we’re doing to our planet. Despite being distracted by the current campaign’s side trips into sludge and triviality, with Karl Rove simultaneously telling Fox News the attacks have gone too far, but that the non-partisan, fact-check organizations that challenge falsehoods can’t be trusted(!), we would do well to consider that the icebergs are still out there, rhetorically, and, in the case of Sarah Palin, very much for real.
In her new position as princess regent of the Republican Party, the vice presidential candidate has had to do some fancy skating, finding herself – with a team of Republican coaches at her ear -- positioning herself on many issues for the very first time and altering some of her existing views to more closely mirror those of her running mate.
Climate change, for example. In her interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson Palin said, “Man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming,” although last December she was quoted by the Alaska newspaper the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner saying, “I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.”
Her partial conversion along the road from St. Paul comes not a moment too soon, as a big chunk of the entire Arctic region appears to be melting, perhaps endangering the McCain/Palin campaign’s boast that Palin is governor of the largest state in the union.
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I love the following, one paragraph, excerpt.
"Joe's Big Problem" by Peggy Drexler, Huffington Post
True, new polls say that America's fascination with Sarah Palin is starting to feel a bit like thinking you have found "the one" -- only to realize he bites his toenails. Her Mrs. Smith goes to Washington narrative isn't holding up all that well to a careful examination of the plot lines.
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