Metaphor's Be With Youse

Let me help the reading impaired of the Left by a short course in metaphor and emblem and symbol.

Many of these knee jerks are busy today aping each other over a statement by the president concerning the absence of inspiring, central leaders in Iraq. The horde of BDS sufferers are such that any small crumb they find is food for their fevered minds for a week. Too bad they are so weak and so ignorant and so incapable of insightful reading. This must be the result of learning nothing other that leftist cant and claptrap from grade one to whatever height of academic achievement they've reached.

I usually don't want to spell it out since many on the Left cannot spell h-i-s-t-o-r-y much less know it, but in the spirit of helping my fellow men, no matter how stupid, here's the "offending" passage with one phrase inserted three times just so they can underestand it.

Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where's [the Iraqi ] Mandela? Well, [the Iraqi ] Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all [the Iraqi ] Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there's a psychological recovery that is taking place. -- Press Conference by the President

I hope that, should they allow themselves to read slowly (yes you can move your lips) the inner meaning of the remarks will dawn upon them. Not that they could ever admit it to themselves, but in the hopes that the slowly mounting pressure of truth denied will, in the end, deliver them a small embolism of awareness.

Mandela, who is rightfully becoming thought of as the South African Jimmy Carter, evidently is too old and dim to understand this himself. His "foundation" felt compelled to issue a notice that Mandela himself was still-alive.

Faced with this startling fact that Mandela yet breathes, we feel like Dorothy Parker. When told of the death of President Calvin Coolidge, she replied: "How could they tell?"

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UPDATE: James Taranto gets this as well:

"OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today In this context, it is clear that the literal meaning of "Where's Mandela?" is "Where is the Iraqi who will play the role in his country that Mandela played in postapartheid South Africa?" This was a pithy metaphor, not an "embarrassing gaffe."

And adds:

Now, how did Reuters get the story wrong? There are, it seems to us, three explanations:

Stupidity. The reporter was so bone-headedly literal-minded that he simply did not understand the rhetorical device Bush was employing.

Laziness. The reporter wasn't actually at the press conference and didn't bother to check the context of the quote.

Dishonesty. The reporter knew full well that Bush was speaking metaphorically and deliberately twisted his meaning in order to fit the stereotype that Bush "has a reputation for verbal faux pas."

In the case of the particular Reuters dispatch "Caulfield" links to, laziness is the most likely answer. It's datelined Johannesburg, so the reporter surely was not at the press conference. But ultimately the explanation for the "worldwide coverage" this "gaffe" has received is either stupidity or dishonesty. Some journalist either failed to understand or deliberately misrepresented Bush's remark. And the joke is on people like our Bush-hating correspondent, who gullibly eat this stuff up.

Taranto is too kind. The explantion is "all of the above" plus "venality" and "corruption." All of which are proven career boosters at today's dying newspapers.

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Posted by Vanderleun at September 21, 2007 5:38 PM | TrackBack