The Wages of RagesLoose-lip Conservatism....
FB 2/20/2010
The Wages of RagesLoose-lip Conservatism....
Excerpt from "The Wages of Rages," by GAIL COLLINS
Politicians often get into trouble when they’re trying to sound more furious than they feel. And Pawlenty told the conservatives they should try to be more like ... Tiger Woods’s wife.
“We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country,” he urged.
The overall strangeness of this thought aside, consider the timing. An angry man had just smashed his airplane into an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex., killing one federal employee, injuring others and breaking quite a few windows. Does this seem like the very best time to be encouraging people to assault government property? Pawlenty’s defenders will undoubtedly say that he did not want his listeners to literally grab a golf club and hit something. But it is my experience that many Americans do not totally understand the concept of a metaphor.
Another star of the conservative conference, Scott Brown, was worse. When the new senator from Massachusetts was asked on Fox News about the I.R.S. office attack, he appeared to embrace the possibility that the pilot of the plane might have been one of his followers.
“And I don’t know if it’s related, but I can just sense, not only in my election but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated,” he said. “They want transparency.”
Let’s think this through. Andrew Joseph Stack III, the pilot, was a man with multiple hatreds, from Catholicism to unions, whose rage at the I.R.S. apparently began when the agency refused to allow him to declare his house a church for the purpose of avoiding taxes. And the end of the story is that he crashed a plane into a building, killing and injuring innocent people. Plus, he burned down his house. Where his wife and her daughter lived.
The Wages of RagesLoose-lip Conservatism....
Excerpt from "The Wages of Rages," by GAIL COLLINS
Politicians often get into trouble when they’re trying to sound more furious than they feel. And Pawlenty told the conservatives they should try to be more like ... Tiger Woods’s wife.
“We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country,” he urged.
The overall strangeness of this thought aside, consider the timing. An angry man had just smashed his airplane into an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex., killing one federal employee, injuring others and breaking quite a few windows. Does this seem like the very best time to be encouraging people to assault government property? Pawlenty’s defenders will undoubtedly say that he did not want his listeners to literally grab a golf club and hit something. But it is my experience that many Americans do not totally understand the concept of a metaphor.
Another star of the conservative conference, Scott Brown, was worse. When the new senator from Massachusetts was asked on Fox News about the I.R.S. office attack, he appeared to embrace the possibility that the pilot of the plane might have been one of his followers.
“And I don’t know if it’s related, but I can just sense, not only in my election but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated,” he said. “They want transparency.”
Let’s think this through. Andrew Joseph Stack III, the pilot, was a man with multiple hatreds, from Catholicism to unions, whose rage at the I.R.S. apparently began when the agency refused to allow him to declare his house a church for the purpose of avoiding taxes. And the end of the story is that he crashed a plane into a building, killing and injuring innocent people. Plus, he burned down his house. Where his wife and her daughter lived.
posted by Mario | 6:08 PM
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