Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of images from Katy Tur….
Katy Tur is an American author and broadcast journalist who works as a correspondent for NBC News. She was also the network’s and MSNBC’s embedded reporter on the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign, where she earned Trump’s vast displeasure.
Her 2017 memoir, Unbelievable. documents her time on the trail and the book’s subtitle more than hints at her conclusion: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History.
While, of course, I already knew the story of Trump’s campaign, I appreciated Tur’s fine eyes and ears for figurative language. Here are my favourite examples:
- I’m distracted by a woman with a sapphire the size of a dinner plate hanging from a rope of diamonds around her neck.
- I zip and unzip my coat as the clouds break and re-form. It is as if Trump is [film-based oceanographer] Steve Zissou and we are his idiosyncratic multinational crew.
- And the thick August air, my God. It pushes into the cab like a wet tongue.
- Covering a political campaign turns out to be a cross between getting married and starting a new job. As with any new job, you begin wearing your best clothes with your best face forward. But over the months, high heels and pressed shirts give way to flats and tees.
- On TV, you’re only shot from the waist up. My motto: Just add a blazer! It’s the TV version of the mullet. Professional up top, party down below.
- “Do you have a charger?” he says, like Oliver Twist asking for some more porridge.
- The story dropped like a cannonball into a kiddie pool. In an instant, the pool was broken, the jumper was hurt, and everyone around him was soaked.
- To actually watch Trump’s miracle come in is a shock like missing the last stair or sugaring your coffee with what proves to be salt.
