A bridge too far: Was Sarah Palin’s crosshairs metaphor a political death threat?

The rat metaphor gets dissected. Ew! Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich pressed the right levers on the Observatory’s feed control panel, turning our scope downwards for the first time ever. In case you were tidying the bomb shelter, the Sucker State’s has-been lion has been bagged by rat catchers for soliciting bribes after several incriminating recordings [...]

A conceptual sand trap… “…it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in.” Barack Obama “We’ll dig our way out!” Homer Simpson Our economy is a hole that covers us. Metaphors Blog this! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit [...]

Building a bigger, better hole… Many observers have noticed an awful lot of metaphors are being used to describe the current American financial crisis. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Metaphor Observatory opined that this surge of metaphor was a response to the fact that nobody could understand the situation. As [...]

John accused of spending too much time on the Joe… The last presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was also the last straw. The debate was awash with references to Joe The Plumber, tipping the scales of nomination for The Metaphor Observatory’s 2008 Top Ten List of Metaphors. We can only take so [...]

Borrego boldly goes where no ‘phor has gone before. A commercial for the Kia Borrego has been nominated for recognition at the 2008 Top Ten Metaphors awards, to be held in December. The Borrego (that’s “lamb” to those who habla español), a new sport utility plebiphor, shares the phosphor stage with the word “metaphor” in [...]

In a pig’s eye… Barack bent more than a few ears with his recent use of the plat-popular proverb “You can put lipstick on a pig [not that there's anything wrong with that....], but it’s still a pig”. The wiry newsflashes were arsonistically kindled into printhouse fires, and the chatterbox became an analytical tinderbox. Though [...]

Two metaphorists take the ring, only one will take the cake. Due to an unfortunate outbreak of Droopy Drawers Syndrome, the entire staff of the Metaphor Observatory had been on hiatus awaiting improved health. We gave up, and have arrived here, four months later, rested and ready for more – rest that is. During our [...]

“Troop surge” floods the airwaves. When the Bush bunch folded the “road map to peace” chit, then abandoned the “stay the course” ship, we thought the whole movement-in-space metaphor system might finally find itself buried head-first in the sands of time. Really, the only thing that connects the Iraq war to any form of movement [...]

(A brief list of metaphors can be found below) 2006 has offered us a juicy smorgasbord of metaphor that connects us to both past and future, far away lands and seas, and the largest and smallest of things. Coming out of a year of great disaster and controversy, we entered 2006, a relatively sleepy news [...]