I figure Labor's going to wait there at the crossroads until Iraq has gone past, and then when Tony Blair comes along befogged in their wake, they'll jump him. Most likely with cudgels.

Ah yes--reminds me of an essay from one of my Smith College students that said, "It is a historical fact that communism began in Europe when conditions were sufficiently ruthless. Then it gained a rapid foothold into future power."

Might be the same writer. Only grown into her full rhetorical power. Footholds and all.

Jane

Someone who was actually paying attention to his words could probably have done something with the fog and the crossroads.

Over at the Marriage Debate blog, there's a guy (Dan Cere) who talks about a "unique sexual ecology". (I blogged a bit about this.) I'm pretty damn sure that if Cere was thinking clearly about his issues, he wouldn't be using phrases like that.

Just think how different the twentieth century would have been if some foresightful president had started a "Ruth for Europe" program.

No good writer ever mixes metaphors, right? :)

"To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them."

"The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me."
--Principal Humphrey C. Cornholtz and Dean Vernon Wormer (National Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody and Animal House, respectively)

It was a dark and foggy night at the crossroads?

It was Orwell's contention in that essay that mixed metaphors of this type denoted a lack of original thought, as anyone actually thinking of these images could not use them in such a conflicting and garbled way.

Leaving aside the issue of stylistic quality, why is it that we don't have any trouble understanding what Milburn means? I've always thought that "the facist octopus singing its swan song" is a beautiful image.

I think some of Mark Turner's work on "blending" is applicable.

I don't have a lot of trouble understanding what Milburn means. I also don't have a lot of trouble understanding that Milburn is more or less writing on automatic.

I don't buy all of Orwell's contentions, but he wasn't entirely wrong, either. Yes, prose like this is functional; a certain minimum level of meaning is conveyed. And yes, what's also conveyed is boredom and insincerity.

Which reminds me of the guy in the third? fourth? New Sun book whose people could only speak in a vocabulary of phrases, rather than words...

It's not (merely) a question of mixing metaphors. Writers can and do mix metaphors with gleeful abandon, and one's mileage varies accordingly. It's whether the writer knows that's what they're doing. Milburn rather evidently doesn't. While we can't literally tar and feather Milburn for his rudderless prose, but we can lob Bonx cheers from the bear pit at his fog-sodden form, slouching fruitlessly at the crossroads long after the last clue bus had gone by.

Or are we looking daggers from the wings? --I can never tell the difference.

Loyal to the Group of Thirteen. (Not me personally, you understand.)

If you want a vision of the future, it is a wireless broadband network feeding requests for foreign money-laundering assistance into a human temporal lobe, forever. With banner ads.

Seventeen, not Thirteen.

"I don't have a lot of trouble understanding what Milburn means. I also don't have a lot of trouble understanding that Milburn is more or less writing on automatic."

With most of Orwell's examples, it is at least somewhat difficult to figure out what they mean.

But Orwell's general principle - that this is "writing on automatic" - certainly seems to me to apply to Milburn's sentence.

David -- yes. Remembered that about three hours too late. Proving that I am a treasonous reactionary wossname.

But remember, the object of power is -still- selling it across the grid for whatever you can get.

We shall go on to the cross-roads, we shall fight in fog, we shall, perhaps, fight on the seas and oceans (to the extent we can through the fog), we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air (despite the fog), we shall defend our Island (taking advantage of the fog), whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches (assuming anyone can find them in the fog), we shall fight on the landing grounds (and the cross-roads), we shall fight in the fields and in the streets (through the fog), we shall fight in the hills (hopefully, above the cloud line); we shall never surrender or retreat to the cross-roads, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving or shrouded in fog, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, assuming we select the right fork at the cross-roads and can find it in the fog, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. Assuming, of course, it can find us in the fog.

For some reason I have a vision of a giant inflatable figure of Tony Blair suspended in the fog. . . .above the crippled ocean liner of British government. That' what these mixed metaphors do to you.

I personally don't see an inflatable Blair. What I take away is a definite sense of the 'sense' spatially located in the narrow atmospheric band above Blair's head and below the fog.

what's also conveyed is boredom and insincerity.

Yup. That's what I see there.

Loved it, and the article. But I couldn't help realizing that I *did* once do a sequence drifting in the crossroads beneath the fog -- in a fantasy novel where it was all tangible and weird fogs at sea opened crossroads between universes. Doesn't bode well for the politician, that would usually result in the MC's suddenly facing icebergs or tropical storms in rapid succession... and I did it in a lot more sentences that had concrete meanings.

I think this just demonstrated why I am not in politics.

And what a fun game suddenly suggests itself!

"Labour dilated."

"Labour turned on its left side."

"Labour's world exploded."

Hmm...

I was thinking about "Labour on a monument, smiling at grief," or possibly "The quality of Labour is not strained; it droppeth as a bin-liner-wrapped MP down from heaven," but never mind.

Labour's Love Lost.

We've got something to do about our world. Try to make it better someway. By telling all these you give people the information and it's the first step for the action.

What?

The boot, Bill! Follow the boot!

The Fabian Society is handing out bingo cards at the Labour Party Conference for the major speeches.

Instead of numbers, they're printed with randomly-picked political cliches.

If it helps the delegates stay awake...

Somehow, however, his reach into the cliche bag has made for some entertaining imagery. Check out this passage:

It means keeping the foot on the accelerator of reform in health and education ... Breaking down barriers of privilege that stand in the way of low income and middle income Britain: hereditary peers in the House of Lords...

I think he's advocating taking an ambulance and a schoolbus, plowing through the doors of the House of Lords, and running over those hereditary peers Deathrace style

From today's BBC politics section:

Opinion divided over Blair speech

"There was no attempt to please, to smooth, to touch the G-spots of Labour, it was an extraordinary speech of crystalline leadership and it was addressed to the country."

I consider that Labor's going to wait until Iraq has gone past, and after that when Tony Blair comes along befogged in their wake, they'll jump him. Hm, I think so

The fascist octopus sings its swan song?

Surely it should spread its bat-wings first? Especially as the song is an extraordinary one of crystalline leadership, addressed to all those who have not yet lost their minds to dread Cthulhu ...

Oh, so that's what it Cthulu like!

I think he's advocating taking an ambulance and a schoolbus, plowing through the doors of the House of Lords, and running over those hereditary peers Deathrace style.

Hmm, like the concerns about telemarketers going out of business, where's the downside?

Caption for the humor-impaired: yes, I'm joking.

From a San Francisco Chronicle article on Arnold Schwarzenegger:

"It's one more nail in the coffin that divides entertainment from news," said Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. "We are heading off to some entirely uncharted waters here as far as politics and entertainment."

Schell is a good guy, and even a good journalist, but he's not exactly honoring his school today....

The problem is that the deterioration of the wall between Entertainment and State. It's all Politainment now, using the full resources of show biz to avoid conveying any substance whatever, regardless of what they're doing or why. I believe we've already answered that question. The president will now pose for photos.

Well, Vance, after they finish nailing together the coffin, perhaps they're going to calk it and rig a sail? I've seen hobbyist builders of wooden boats make cradle-boats; why not a coffin boat?

But that leaves one question unanswered: if the coffin divides entertainment from news, which one is inside, and which one is outside the coffin?

Never mind, the answer is obvious!

I would remind all of you, and you know who you are, that here in the land of the, thing, and home of the, uh, fries, as we like to call them, we have a Constitutional, whatsit, doohickey, annulment, affirming that everyone around here already has has free Blair speech, without answering to any "BBC political section," though we are laboring mightily -- that's right-to-work labor, not, you know -- to establish special sections throughout Heim -- hrm -- HOMEland Security, because freedom isn't free, it's competitively bid. Thank you and good night.

Very late in the discussion, I know, but I just heard a soccer commentator saying of a team on a losing streak "they're sliding down the slippery slope, and just going nowhere."

I just e-mailed the editor of Time the message below. Thought I'd share. It's in reference to a piece in the current magazine titled "Leaking With a Vengeance" regarding the Plame affair.

------

"So when Plame's husband tried to step in front of the shoot-first, verify-later car that Bush had been steering, it was only a matter of time before the hard-liners tried to flatten Wilson. "

The above sentence from your piece is the most tortured mixed metaphor I've read in ages. What on earth is a "shoot first, verify later car"? Who sells these dangerous vehicles? The public has a right to know!

Sounds like a Stiven Kings story...brrr...the moor the moon and feaaaar;))

The next sound you hear will be the bump of a paddle in this rudderless boat as Labour makes sashimi of the facist octopus.

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