“The chancellor’s unsuccessful strategy for spiking the AfD’s guns has been to ape its draconian positions on immigration.” — The Guardian view on Friedrich Merz: Germany’s chancellor must change course to halt the rise of the AfD, The Guardian, 21ix26
Category Archives: Mixed Metaphors
Dog-Gristle Politics
As Reform seeks a statement victory in Gorton and Denton, with a candidate who has made dog-whistle nativism his calling card, Manchester has again become a political crucible. […] As Nigel Farage’s intellectual outriders speak of a “politics of home”, which casts doubt over certain citizens’ right to be considered British, a billionaire tax exile in Monaco has added grist to their mill. — “Guardian view on Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Britain does not need political lectures from a billionaire tax exile”, The Guardian, 12ii26
Maven of Mixcegenation
The obfuscating and intentional doublespeak swirling around the emotive cauldron ingredients of “immigration”, “illegal immigration” and “small boats” has been intentionally leveraged into mainstream political and media jargon by Reform UK, big tech algorithms, and thence into the baying mob. […] We are daily enriched by, and should feel deeply indebted to, the many people of colour in this and other sectors of our society. — “This capitulation to racist rhetoric will not end well for Labour or Britain”, letter by Quentin Cowen of Laxfield, Suffolk in The Guardian, 18xi25
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
“The obfuscating and intentional doublespeak swirling around the emotive cauldron of…” woulda bin even betterer. If the ingredients aren’t bubbling away in the emotive cauldron, why would doublespeak bother to swirl around them? It certainly wouldn’t swirl around them as much, one would’ve thought. And does “emotive cauldron ingredients” mean “emotive-cauldron ingredients” or “emotive cauldron-ingredients”? Maybe it’s both. I’m also struck by the implications of “intentionally leveraged”. Is it possible to “unintentionally leverage” something? Not in this context, one would have thought. And if doublespeak is swirling, that is, if it’s fluid, it’s hard to see how one could exert leverage on it.
Etc, etc. Like all the best Guardianese, this passage is passionately pregnant with interrogation-inducing imagery in a way that is very difficult to achieve by conscious effort. Perhaps Quentin has been smoking some wacky baccy or other psychoactive stimulant supplied by one of the many Persons of Colour enriching his life and fighting da power in da extensive hoodz of Laxfield, Suffolk.
Penny’s Petrified Parade
“Without political agitation, sex can always be co-opted, calcifying gender revolution into another weary parade of saleable binary stereotypes.” — Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2011)
Give It Some Pivot
Hydrology, geology, acoustics and more combine in one magnificently muddled mixed metaphor:
When [Emily] Pankhurst ordered her followers to stop bombing the British state and start helping to arm it for the war effort [after 1914], it left some of the most radicalized to fall into “a feminist-fascist estuary formed in the crater generated by Mrs Pankhurst’s pivot from law-breaking insurgency to conformist cheerleading”. — ‘It’s a scary time’: Sophie Lewis on the ‘enemy feminisms’ that enable the far right, The Guardian, 21ii25
Among the baffling questions raised by the metaphor is this: Why “estuary”? It would make sense to say “[fall into] a stagnant and stinking feminist-fascist pool formed in the crater…” But estuaries aren’t stagnant and craters don’t create estuaries anyway. Rivers do when they flow into a sea or lake. What would the river and sea represent?
I’ve no idea. And I would find it very difficult to match that mixed metaphor without making it seemed contrived or confected. Mixed metaphors are a zen thing: for best effect, they’ve got to flow from the fingertips or float off the tongue without effort, welling up from a bottomless crater of bollocks like a meth-smoking bull in a china-shop riding a feral tsunami of unhinged imagery and clashing comparativization.
Miximal Metaphors
“Each of Robyn’s three Honey-era Later performances featured a moment. Towards the end of ‘Missing U’, she finally stared down the camera, having avoided eye contact for fear of emotional collapse, while during ‘Honey’ she did away with the mic stand to make room for supple dance moves. With ‘Every Heartbeat’, meanwhile, peaked when she punctured the highwire emotional blood-letting with a cheeky wink.” — “The 100 greatest BBC music performances – ranked!”, The Guardian, 6×22
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum…
If you think it’s easy to mix so many metaphors in so few words, all I can say is: Try it for yourself!
Oh My Guardian #8
“When it comes to Harry Potter, JK Rowling just can’t leave it alone. This is not necessarily a bad thing – fans have got to see Harry and friends all grown-up in the Cursed Child plays – but she’s also managed to muddy the waters by her constant rejigging of the original narrative furniture.” — Fantastic Beasts isn’t racist, but JK Rowling should stop tweaking the source material, Hannah Flint, The Guardian, 28ix2018.
• Oh My Guardian #7 — the previous entry in this award-winning series
• Reds under the Thread more on mixed metaphors… in terms of The Guardian…
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates
Oh My Guardian #6
[…] the whole vintage package – which started as essentially a rediscovery of simple skills, tying generations together and serving as a visual cake-based bulwark against modern turbulence – has been used to sugar-coat a free-market nationalism that isn’t sweet at all. — Zoë Williams, Let’s ditch the nostalgia that’s invaded our TV and seeped into our politics, The Guardian, 30iv2018.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• Oh My Guardian #5
• Zo with the Flow
• Reds under the Thread (more on mixed metaphory)
Maxed Messages
• Terminal Trio – Robert Burchill on “in terms of”
• Mixed Messages – the Joy of Guardian prose
• Paradigms Loused
Oh My Guardian #2
“Instead, Mr Comey has rocket-fuelled a venomous contest just when Mr Trump was desperate for a lifeline…” — The Guardian view on the FBI’s Clinton probe: exactly the wrong thing to do
Previously pre-posted…
