August 27, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:Summer games
I have been an ardent fan of the metaphors of Tom Friedman ever since reading this piece from Matt Taibbi in the New York Press:
The hallmark of the Friedman method is a single metaphor, stretched to column length, that makes no objective sense at all and is layered with other metaphors that make still less sense. The result is a giant, gnarled mass of incoherent imagery. When you read Friedman, you are likely to encounter such creatures as the Wildebeest of Progress and the Nurse Shark of Reaction, which in paragraph one are galloping or swimming as expected, but by the conclusion of his argument are testing the waters of public opinion with human feet and toes, or flying (with fins and hooves at the controls) a policy glider without brakes that is powered by the steady wind of George Bush’s vision. . . .
. . . On the eve of war, Friedman puts us in a special kind of movie theater, one that has movable chairs instead of seats: "If this were not about my own country, my own kids and my own planet," he writes, "I’d pop some popcorn, pull up a chair and pay good money just to see how this drama unfolds." (Is there a place in the world where one can pop one’s own popcorn and then "pay money" to watch something?) But as it turns out, we’re watching not a movie, but a crap game; Bush is about to undertake a "shake of the dice." By the third paragraph, Bush has abandoned dice for football: he is about to throw "The Long Bomb." We then find out that Friedman’s wife is opposed to the war, but soon go back to the crap game and the "audacious shake of the dice." In the end, we find out that this has not been craps or football all along, but shop class:"So here’s how I feel," he concludes. "I feel as if the president is presenting us with a beautiful carved mahogany table–a big, bold, gutsy vision. But if you look underneath, you discover that this table has only one leg. His bold vision on Iraq is not supported by boldness in other areas."
This must be derived from the popular expression: "He sure has guts. Like a mahogany table." Only in this case, the guts only have one leg.
Today's is particularly juicy:
Let's start with mentality. We are not "rebuilding" Iraq. We are "building" a new Iraq — from scratch. Not only has Saddam Hussein's army, party and bureaucracy collapsed, but so, too, has the internal balance between Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, which was held together by Saddam's iron fist. Also, the reporting on Iraq under Saddam rarely conveyed how poor and rundown Saddam had made it. Iraq today is the Arab Liberia. In short, Iraq is not a vase that we broke to remove the rancid water inside, and now we just need to glue it back together. We have to build a whole new vase. We have to dig the clay, mix it, shape it, harden it and paint it. (This is going to cost so much more than President Bush has told us.)
Behind this metaphor, we suspect, is the ghost of some well-meaning but incoherent sixth grade composition teacher. "Be original!" she proclaimed, and when the children bombarded her with their original, if somewhat inapt metaphors, she beamed like the sun rising over the silver-white beaches of Honolulu on a verdant spring morn.
Original it certainly is, but what does it mean? It gives us uncomfortable visions of what happens in the Friedman household when the flowers have finally gone where the woodbine twineth: there is Thomas, preparing to smash yet another wedding present on the flagstone floor (which has just been installed at great expense); there is his wife, pleading. "Tom," she says, with a voice worn hoarse by years of steady sorrow, "Tom, we don't have to break the vase. We could just pour out the water through the hole in the top."
But he is resolute. There is rancid water in the vase. It must be smashed. It will be smashed. Yet that is not enough, either. Rolling up his sleeves, he strides boldly out the door with his chin high and his gaze fixed boldly on the bright proletarian future, towards the banks of the nearby stream, where he will gather the clay to build a new vase, a better vase. One that will not have any rancid water in it -- at least until Mother's Day rolls around again. His weeping wife is left alone in the kitchen to sweep up the remains of yet another turbulent middle eastern country.
One understands, of course, what he was trying to get at. But there are so many better metaphors with which to get it. However did he think of this one? It quite strains my imagination.
I open the floor to my readers. Let's see whether this is a talent unique to Friedman, or something anyone can do. By email or comment, submit your best "Almost, but not quite, totally inapt -- yet strikingly original -- metaphor" for consideratin by your peers. It's like the funeral of a relative you don't like very well: a great way to while away an otherwise dull afternoon.
A better question is just why this guy keeps getting Pulitzer's -- Friedman is an astonishingly bad writer, he's full of himself, and when he's right he's painfully stating the obvious.
He did a piece before the war (with Iraq) that belabored an analogy between diplomacy and "chicken" driving that went on and on and on. What he meant was: "Effective diplomacy requires the credible threat of force" -- but he spent 800 words writing about driving without a steering wheel (perhaps more apt an metaphor than he realized).
As I said back when the Taibi piece first came out, there is an obvious example of a place where you can eat popcorn, pull up a chair, put up your money and wait to see how the movie turns out. Only arrogant left-coasters wouldn't have thought of it.
It's true that Friedman could use a better editor. If he'd just substituted "snow globe" for "vase," he could have avoided all that mockery . . .
And how about this quote:
"Also, the reporting on Iraq under Saddam rarely conveyed how poor and rundown Saddam had made it."
Would that be the reporting about the 100,000 children a year killed by UN sanctions? I missed all of those pre-war stories about the happy and prosperous Iraqis.
J. Mann, that's not cricket. Where is that place?
There are professions, e.g. science, which require you to write, but which you can enter regardless of your talent for writing. Science deals with this problem, more or less, by mandating a nonstyle that provides no scope for writing talent if you had any. "Your research will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Metaphor is irrelevant."
Friedman appears to provide a cautionary tale, of what it's like when a person with no writing ability enters a profession requiring him to write, but which does not put a literary straitjacket on him. I have a whole new appreciation for _Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer_.
Jane,
Aren't metaphors fun! Hilarious post. (Slow day at work?)
Somehow, "snow globes" and "deadly Iraqi summer" just don't go together. On the other hand, the vase imagery reminds us of all the valuable ancient artifacts stolen (and/or smashed) because of the perfidy of the American army. So maybe, Friedman _had_ something like "snow globe" and some Raines-channeling editor changed it to "vase"!
How about "ship in a bottle" as a metaphor? We had to smash the Saddam-bottle to free the Iraqi ship inside... except the riggings have gotten all tangled and the hull leaks and we need to put in new masts before the new Iraq can, uh, safely sail into the 21st century! Is Iraq ready for Western-style outboard motors, or should we just teach them how to sail?
"...the internal balance between Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, which was held together by Saddam's iron fist."
Sometimes Friedman sticks to cliche metaphors. He's consistent, though, as they are also frequently inapt. Was Iraq balanced in Saddam's iron fist the way the scales of justice balance in Blind Justice's bronze hand? No, I think here's where the flagstone floor should go: Iraq used to be "balanced" like a flagstone floor with the Shiites and Kurds underneath and the Sunnis sitting on top, while Saddam and his cronies danced. (Hmm, can you dance on flagstone floors? Maybe parquet would be better?) Maybe Saddam should be doing Russian folk dances? Yeah, in shoes provided by France! And now the US has torn up the dance floor, and has to build another one, but some Iraqis are unhappy they can't dance (insert Dancing In The Dark reference here!) until the new floor is built...
That is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. You have captured the essence of Friedman's writing perfectly.
The moral of the story? Give cheap vases for Mother's Day.
If you think this is bad, you should try reading his books -- first of all, there's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", which is an interesting metaphor (I challenge anyone to come up with a better one) for the choice that the Mideast needs to make.
I'd like to be the first to say, though, that he's the best writer of all the NYT columnists and a very skillful reporter. Can anyone else name someone who is more influential (deservedly so, I think) at framing debates that Friedman?
I forgot to add: Taibbi is right, though, as I was going to mention about his latest book, "Longitudes and Attitudes" -- apart from the great stuff in the book (and there is a ton of it), he literally has a new metaphor per column. Matter of fact, there might be more than one metaphor per column.
Worst of all, he loves his metaphors and he uses them in his interviews incessantly. I'm afraid that with the end of the Iraq War, he may have jumped the shark -- we shall see.
'If you think this is bad, you should try reading his books -- first of all, there's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", which is an interesting metaphor (I challenge anyone to come up with a better one)'
How about "McWorld versus Jihad"?
I suspect that he sometimes cooks up a metaphor, no matter how clumsy, and then struggles to craft an argument, no matter how tortured, to fit it. I remember one he excreted regarding how various nationalties would differ in operating a gas station that managed to be cliched, inapt, and tiresome all at once. After producing it in a column, he regurgiated it on the speaking circuit for months; I saw him use it twice on C-span. To be fair to ol'Tom, Leno and Letterman have a team of gag writers to keep the stale material fresh, to employ a Yogiism.
I thought the same thing about someone not knowing
Is there a place in the world where one can pop one’s own popcorn and then "pay money" to watch something
Sheesh...
I'm old enough to remember a time before video cassette rentals and Pay Per View, (even if I'm not old enough to remember a time before pay cable) but I can't imagine anyone being ignorant of these things...
Tom Friedman’s writing reflects a man who shies away from reaching a very uncomfortable conclusion: he has intellectually little in common with his fellow liberals. The well known New York Times journalist earns his living and receives enormous existential satisfaction as a perceived member of the liberal “elite.” After all, there are white wine and brie cheese functions to attend. How many Pulitzers go to writers associated with The Weekly Standard and National Review?
Does anybody really believe that Friedman would be as wealthy today had he always been a conservative? John Derbyshire claimed that he only earned a little more than $30,000 in 2001. Tom Friedman probably won't fart in your room for less than that for one evening. Just follow the money!
Challenge accepted! Here's the absolute worst overwrought metaphor I can do. Not just inapt, but thoroughly tasteless and offensive, mixing almost-apt motifs in inconsistent ways:
Iraq today is not the glamorous image of a B-24 Liberator, lightly scarred from a nighttime bombing run over Aachen or Hamburg, dapper lieutenant overseeing refurbishment and refitting.
Instead, Iraq is a rickety plane smashed headfirst into the traffic control tower: a total loss. Recovery will require constructing a whole new Iraq and putting a green crew at the controls. The impact did untold damage to the entire region that will take years to comprehend.
There. Even a 9/11 implication to tug on the heartstrings. I dare you to worse.
Ev
Ev, that's kid stuff. Try this one:
…In short, Iraq is not a house whose drywall we removed to repair the termite damage inside. We have to build the whole house. We have to get the building permit, pay the water and sewer hookup fees, pour the Foundation of Law, put up the Framework of Government, install the Wiring and Plumbing of Justice, Put up the Aluminum (or Wood or Stucco) Siding of Economic Development, nail the Sheetrock of Environmental Protection, thatch the Roof of Security, pave the Driveway of Transportation, Lay the Sod of Democracy, kill the Pocket Gophers of Terrorism, spray the Fire Ants of Popular Unrest, sign the Mortgage Papers of International Humanitarian Aid, and get an occupancy permit from the Blue-Helmeted Building Inspectors. (This is going to cost so much more than President Bush has told us).
Hey, this was fun. Let’s try it again with the next column.
Ken, Ken. You must learn, grasshopper.
I'll grant that you have wordiness and innapropriate application of metaphor down to a T. But your example lacks the the essential thick icing of design: the classless, tasteless, cut-butter-with-a-chainsaw simile that can only come from invoking national tragedy to further your personal political cause. Consider:
Like NASA, America's lack of planning and failure to learn from past experience has resulted again in catastrophe. By allowing the hot plasma of neoconservative rhetoric to penetrate the protective shielding of our good judgement, we created a fireball in Iraq that has spread the wreckage of America's credibility far and wide over the fields and hills of international opinion.
Ev
Howz'a'bout:
Like Laci Peterson on Christmans Eve, the American Public went for a drive with the man (Bush) they trusted, only to have it's beliefs strangled, stabbed, and mutilated, then tossed overboard into the cold sea of reality when it's ostensibly trustworthy partner in government instead turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, who not only ate all the porridge with his tax cuts, but built his house with straw, and let another wolf, in the guise of Osama, come blow the house down, when Bush cried about yet another wolf, Hussein, who was not like the scorpion riding on the frog's back across the river, but more like the wizard behind the curtain."
Is it possible that the foolishness of breaking a vase to get the rancid water out of it was the whole point? Perhaps Friedman, like a blog commenter who knows where it's possible to pop your own popcorn and then pay to watch a movie but is too cute to let anyone else in on the secret, has chosen a needlessly obscure way of saying that instead of breaking the Iraqi vase we could have let the UN carry our water to the mainstream of global opinion, emptying it out through the hole opened in Saddam's stonewall by the inspection process.
Unimaginative me, I'll stick with his basic pedestrian metaphors (similes, similitudes, analogies, images, figures of speech, comparisons).
My favorite Friedman comparison is his (far from original) simplistic "Arab Street" chestnut. For instance, earlier this year, he was in Cairo & noted vicious anti-American sentiment. Um, does the term "Potemkin Village" ring a bell? Does he think that Egypt is a free & open society where one gets to meet the folk & can accurately gauge their "feelings"? Maybe he thinks the antiwar bozos here are the "American Street". as Orwell said, one has to be awfully intelligent to say things so awfully stupid.
Next comes his "Bush is a Cowboy" chestnut. Even got mixed up in referencing the Western genre.
Last, is his MoDo "Big Oil" stuff.
I think that it's a good thing that he has a reputation, 'cause otherwise it'd be hard to take him seriously.
My contribution can be found here.
Let's do this again, shall we?
Reading Matt's and J Mann's posts, I asked myself why I too didn't think of pay-per-view or video rental when considering Jane's embedded question. But looking back at the original language, it gradually became clear. To say one "paid/pays/would pay good money to" X is not to describe an action (one would instead say one "paid/pays/would pay to" X) but rather to indicate a relationship, that X cost or costs one a non-trivial amount, or that one is willing to accept a non-trivial cost for X. However, when Friedman says he will pop popcorn, pull up a chair, and pay good money for the privilege of seeing something, parallelism dictates that he must be talking about three actions in sequencet, as the first two items are unambigously actions.
If I say "I rent in Soho, eat Kosher, and drive my father's Buick.", no action is implied; but notice the transformation when I say "I cut through two vacant lots to the garage, tip the parking attendant, and drive my father's Buick.". Now I'm driving.
And so it's reasonable to infer that Friedman is paying, that is, is in the act of paying; Problem 1 is that he so indicates by using a conventional phrase in an counter-conventional way. But Problem 2 is the difficulty in convincingly answering the logically implied question, "Paying whom or what?", the verb "paying", when used with "money", requiring a payee. The video store clerk? _After_ popping popcorn and pulling up a chair? Or is he "paying" the pay-per-view automated ordering system? Does anyone speak like that? As Jane suggests, it's hard to think to think of a scenario common enough to turn into a metaphor where one would pop popcorn, pull up a chair, and hand over some cash.
In order to make his assertion convincing, one must interpret Friedman as though he had used the phrase "pay good money to" in the standard way, as descriptive of state/relationship, not action. But in that case, Friedman has broken parallelism. I may smell (state) like a dead fish if I have a fishy odor, but I cannot prance (action) like a gazelle, warble (action) like a sparrow, and smell (must also be action, dictated by earlier element in parralel structure) like a dead fish, because dead fish can't smell (although I could smell like a bloodhound).
His use of the phrase is chimeric, and thus hard to pin down why it doesn't sound quite right. One can interpret his usage to answer any one objection in isolation (Is his desribed scenario believable (even as a metaphor)? Is that phrase typically used in that way? Does that use exhibit good parallelism in context?), but not to simultaneously answer all objections.
These are the sorts of things my wife and I have our worst fights about, by the way. Grammar and usage. I suppose I'm lucky. And I'm usually less nitpicky than this post might suggest.
IdahoEv ahead by a nose, with Ken Summers closing from the outside
> the vase imagery reminds us of all the valuable
> ancient artifacts stolen (and/or smashed) because
> of the perfidy of the American army.
Uhh, PJ, what theft? What perfidy? That's a completely discredited story; even the NYT admitted so.
Uhh, PJ, what theft? What perfidy?
What, Kirk, you want me to ruin a good metaphor for a little thing like truth??? Besides, if I make enough sly references to discredited stories, they'll become true again, right?
"Paying whom or what?", the verb "paying", when used with "money", requiring a payee. The video store clerk? _After_ popping popcorn and pulling up a chair?
Iraq is not a bowl we broke to get rid of the rancid popcorn that we foolishly popped _before_ hopping in our dad's Buick to drive down to Blockbuster. Fortunately, the Pottery Barn is on the way, maybe we can just buy another bowl...
He never metaphor he didn't like.
There. Now you can stop dreading it.
BTW, I had a friend who had a simile tendency.
A one-horse open-door policy sleigh
When it comes to the ‘greening’ of Arab society, the West is all thumbs
By Thomas Friedman
The Arab world today is a frostbite victim thumb-wrestling with the hand of fate upon the scorching sands of international opinion. How ironic that in the age of globalism, the mullahs and the martyrs stubbornly lock horns with modernism and play a losing game of catch-up with the burger-and-fries culture the rest of the world has embraced.
But as they drive down this lonely, iconoclastic road – unlike the Africans, Asians and South Americans, who also suffer internal turmoil, undeveloped economies and despotic rule – the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya et al flail like washed-up prizefighters at progress and its progenitors. Angry young Arab men commit nuisance crimes against the more powerful and wealthy West, like blinding America with the high beams of terrorism and ignoring warnings to put on snow chains.
Hence the frostbite. And the victims can’t say others didn’t advise that they wear mittens.
The fact is, despite what some Muslims might think, the US-UK coalition, Europe and the UN all want to pour the Arab street a nice, steaming mug of cocoa. The trio simply disagree on the temperature at which it should be served, or whether to put marshmallows in it, perhaps those green ones from St Patrick’s Day.
This is rock-paper-scissors match of enormous global significance. Europe’s bureaucratic “paper” solution trumps the US-UK’s “rock”-and-roll military approach. But the US-UK “rock” trumps the “scissors” the UN employs to cut the ribbons for hospital and aid agency openings, which of course trumps Europe’s “paper”, round and round like a powerful and fuel-efficient automobile doing endless “donuts” right in front of the on-ramp to the Prosperity Expressway.
That’s a cycle that must be broken; a revolving doorway without hinges; a merry-go-round where the paint is peeling on the once-elegant horses and giant frogs and noble griffins. When you’ve got a carton of milk that’s gone bad, sometimes the only thing you can do is burn down your entire house around it.
However, there’s good news: George Bush plays a mean game of rock-paper-scissors.
He’s got “dynamite”. It’s a Texas thing.
Bush may not be the cleverest fellow. He may not be the most diplomatic. But what he will do is stare any terrorist’s high beams right in the face and stay glued in that spot until there’s a collision. He’s not afraid to break a few vases or spill a little milk along the way, or cut down a mahogany tree to make a gorgeous table.
That’s what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s what’s happening across the Middle East. The mullahs and the martyrs may weep and wail and gnash their teeth, point fingers and pop popcorn, but modernism is coming to them, sweeping away all the bundles of rocks and reams of paper and pairs of scissors like a hurricane blowing across the desert.
We’re finally committed to fixing the Middle East. We may drive over a few potholes along the way, but nobody ever said it would be smooth sailing or a walk in the park.
Civilization-building is not a foot-race but a marathon – and we ought to be glad that we have a president dedicated to staying in the ballgame right through to the final whistle (though the dynamite is going to cost a lot more than Bush is saying, nevermind the marshmallows).
she beamed like the sun rising over the silver-white beaches of Honolulu on a verdant spring morn.
That's a simile, kid.
Jonathan's post gets the point missed slightly by Taibbi's column: it's not the use of metaphor so much as an inconsistent thread of them strung along in a given Friedman column. That's important, because I'd hate to think that some of the fun being had at Friedman's expense is also directed at figurative language.
The preference for simile or metaphor is generally drawn from psychological disposition: concrete or abstract reasoning. Nearly nine-tenths of the American population is comprised of concrete thinkers who see something as it is, believing it inconceivable that a subject should be considered (as opposed to compared to) something it is not. It's a less vulnerable thing to do to say Iraq is like a vase, as opposed to trying to suspend readers' disbelief while you stuff 26 million people and their Fertile Crescent into fired clay. As a consequence, many of this concrete group, no strangers to sarcasm, see metaphors as flighty mischaracterizations that offer more comic appeal than deeper meaning.
For the abstractionist minority, who are derided by their literal peers as scatterbrained and impractical to begin with, figurative language and real-life symbolism really does come more naturally. Things are other things - often - and identifying them so is easier than wasting a paragraph or two ascribing similarities. Unfortunately, this is not appreciated as economy by the majority - far from.
Popular contemporary writing, particularly the high-stakes op-ed column, operates from an Ernest Hemingway rulebook: start talking make-believe and you're dead. I'm only a fair-weather fan of Friedman's ideology, delivery notwithstanding - but man, oh man. Poor guy.
[notes]Classless…tasteless…cut…butter…with…chain…saw…national…tragedy[/notes]
Got it, Ev. But we still need to maintain inaptness, ineptness, and internal inconsistency, as well as demonstrate our cultural superiority as Boomers. Try this:
Like James Dean traveling 85 mph on an unfortunately-not-deserted highway, the Bush Administration is barreling head-on into the side of the station wagon of world opinion.
Actually, I think we should stick to the particular metaphor [“What’s a metaphor?” “Shut up! That wasn’t even funny in fourth grade.”] in question. I’ll keep working on it.
And now that I have read that epic by Damon, I'll have to work especially hard. That was a work of art, man.
If you want cogent well-written comments on the arab/moslem world read Fouad Ajami.
If you like pompous windbags read Friedman.
Next time you read him, count the number of times "I" appears in the column.
His appearances on television are dreadful. He has Gore's problem of assuming his audience are third-graders and he has a PhD.
Cheers, Ken. When I finished I discovered I'd grown a 'tache and had an irresistable urge to name-drop the Qatari diplomatic corps.
Friedman lost my respect when he fell for the Saudi Prince's 'I have been working on a peace plan but those untrustworthy Israelis have prevented me from implementing it. See here it is in my desk.' ploy.
For a while I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping he was simply pressuring the Saudis to support the 'plan'. But I have since reached the conclusion that Friedman actually believed there was a plan that existed for a purpose other than PR.
It's sad that a reporter generally considered the most influential in his area could be so mislead by such an obvious tactic. I guess it's an example of people seeing what they want to see.
Damon is a Titan, wrestling with the Great God Metaphor, and ultimately towering triumphant over the rest of us, who have flown to close to the sun, and had our wings of wax melt into a puddle that has congealed in the popcorn we have popped , rendering paying for a seat that we can pull up a futile exercise.
Oh my doG.
I think a whole new form of humor is now being born. I hope the poor parents are prepared for the afterbirth.
"...we need to put in new masts before the new Iraq can, uh, safely sail into the 21st century!"
Sail...across that famous bridge?
Rising late from bed under the thermonuclear glare of the California sun, I scan the web with alarm: the bubbling reactor-cauldron of thought that is this comment thread has overheated and ruptured, spilling, like Three Mile Island, a radioactive funk of bad metaphor over the landscape of our collective consciousness. The minds of potential writers will be made cancerous for seven generations. Or perhaps I misunderestimate: if this thread continues to grow, a Chernobyl of inept/inapt writing could sterilize the till-now-fertile soil of political punditry far and wide, killing thousands of essays and poisoning untold millions of debates.
Ken, I think you're learning! Though I'd argue that internal consistency is a good thing, and thus to be assiduously avoided.
Hats off to Damon. That post belongs in the Louvre.
hey KLUG, to say he's the best writer among NYT columnists is 'damning with faint praise'
(damn, I wish I could think of a simile, or a metaphor, (a simaphor?) )
Jon -- no kidding. But he's not bad -- name me a better columnist about foreign affairs in general. Ajami doesn't count, because he's mainly an area specialist; Friedman isn't as much.
better foreign affairs columnist (easily): Mark Steyn
Friedman went to my high school- I think we may have had the same "sixth-grade composition teacher."
Does the NYTimes employ Maureen Dowd to make Friedman sound like Winston Churchill? The really scary part is that he is the best they have, until David Brooks actually shows up.
IdahoEv, you're too kind, but per the Louvre suggestion, how about putting all of Friedman's columns in an exhibit with the Venus de Milo.
They could call it "Art with no legs, brains or punch".
Oops, scratch that. Just "Art with no punch". I forgot she had a head and legs. Damn. Too clever by half.
Damon, the entire Institute for Logical Reasoning is in awe. Ms. So Su Mi, Esq. may be contacting you regarding copyright reproduction arrangements.
As an amateur potter, am I the only one who noticed that you don't "harden" and "paint" a clay vase, you "fire" and "glaze" it?
This isn't exactly specialist knowledge; one would think that the editors at the New York Times think highly enough of their readership to use the proper terms.
Mortimer J Adler has written that there are analytic truths and poetic truths. Analytic truths are sort of sought in academia, and analytic truths seem to be demanded in the hard sciences. Poetic truths are sought, not just in poetry, but in such endeavors as the ballet: nobody wants the ballet dancer's movements to approach the way we mere mortals move in the *real* world -- we do not just expect, we rather DEMAND that the movements be difficult and non-natural. Noncorrespondence to reality is rather sought. When folks like Mr. Friedman attempt(even if ineptly) to present us with poetic truths, we can make the mistake of believing that a few analytic truths are being presented - - in which case, we're being had.
"...we need to put in new masts before the new Iraq can, uh, safely sail into the 21st century!"
Sail...across that famous bridge?
Damn, Mark, wish I'd thought of that.
Damon, great article. Have you thought of writing for the NY Times?
But your line: "When you've got a carton of milk that's gone bad, sometimes the only thing you can do is burn down your entire house around it." made me want to ask, "What about the Children?" You know, the missing children. On the milk carton. That you've ignored, solely to score points in an international rock-scissors-paper game. And you call yourself a NY Times columnist!
J.M., I must admit that I didn't notice the "harden" or "paint" being wrong. I probably unconsciously substituted "fire" for "harden". Now that I look at Friedman's sentence, don't you usually put the glaze on _before_ you fire pottery? Perhaps by "harden" Friedman meant to simply dry the clay, which would make for a non-watertight vase... which is one way to solve the rancid water problem.
All: should we try to come up with a phrase that describes when a columnist uses mismatched metaphors in a singularly inept way? After all, Fisk and Dowd both have verbs named after them. I don't see "friedmaning" (friedmanning?) catching on; what do you think of shortening it to "frying".
"Boy, he sure fried that column." "This article is nothing but frying from start to finish."
Especially egregious examples could be referred to as "deep fried", "re-fried", or perhaps involve a mention of bread crumbs.
PJ/Maryland
Actually, one typically fires a piece once, glazes it, and fires it again. The first firing is called a bisque firing.
While you can glaze an unfired piece (a process referred to as raw glazing), it typically isn't done on the craft/hobbyist level; it's very easy to ruin the piece by doing so.
As I tool down the information highway, this blog is one of my favorite roadside destinations. The company is interesting, and one gets hard boiled reporters, deep fried opinions and interesting disections of prose as the floor show.
So, Park your carcase, get some coffee and enjoy enjoy the huge portions of intellectual stimulation heavily spiced with wit and erudition.
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