TOM EATON: Consistency of metaphor is everything
Don't be swayed by political rhetoric ahead of May 8 elections, we just need someone who knows how to keep the lights on
A lion, I keep being told, does not lose sleep over the opinions of sheep. Sometimes this slogan is a snappy retort by an EFF supporter on Twitter. Sometimes it’s a creaky coup de grâce by an elderly SA Donald Trump supporter on Facebook. And sometimes it’s just drifting around between social media, pinned to the ether by someone who thinks it sounds intelligent. I understand why one might throw around a bit of trite nonsense like this. After all, I like intellectually lazy metaphorical zingers as much as the next pedlar of hot takes. But the tricky thing with a metaphor is that you have to run it through to its logical conclusion so you don’t end up looking like a rube. Consider, for example, a cartoon doing the rounds showing a meteor roaring towards a huddle of oblivious dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are labelled “The Republican Party” and the meteor is Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. See, she’s going to obliterate all the dinosaurs in the GOP — except, as far as I un...
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