Impoliteness is our Kryptonite

Reading time: About 1 minute

I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about an extended metaphor from Tabatha Southey.

A friend and I have been sharing our admiration for Canadian journalist Tabatha Southey. A Saturday columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper, Southey is a fine writer who is both astute and hilariously funny.

Here, for example, is the column she concocted out of the sorry mess that is the Rob Ford saga. (Southey’s column  — which is well worth a read — was published in the Globe on November 15/13.)

But here is the language she used that had me spraying tea out of my nose:

He seems to think he [Rob Ford] can continue being mayor just because he has said, “I love being your mayor.”

That’s not Canadian! We love being warm, but we know damn well summer last only 12 weeks. We’re on unfamiliar ground here. We’re not equipped to deal with people like the Fords: In the face of raging, sulking, bullying men, we’re at a loss. Impoliteness is our Kryptonite.

Canadians are a principled and courageous people, sure, but had the Germans walked into our trenches at Vimy Ridge and put their feet up on the furniture we might just have stared blankly in embarrassment until they won.

I like the way she reaches all the way back to the Second World War to develop a metaphor that involves Germans putting their feet on Canadian furniture. The Superman reference is nice, too.Basically, we’re too polite to criticize the Ford brothers, she says.

Truth is, she’s right.

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