Weren’t Republicans supposed to be the preppy-sports types? Didn’t Letterman describe the candidates at a recent GOP debate as looking like guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club?
So you might have expected Maureen Dowd to have used a metaphor from a blue-collar sport to describe a candidates’s performance. There’s always the tried-and-true: “He had his opponent against the ropes.” Or perhaps, “she rolled a resounding strike,” and then “so-and-so posterized the Candidate X with an in-your-face slam dunk.” But here’s how Maureen Dowd, in her p.p.v. column this morning, extolled Hillary’s recent performances.
In the first two Democratic debates and Monday night’s forum on faith, Hillary Clinton commanded the stage, just like a great squash player dominates the T.
A squash metaphor? How ineffably elitist. Shades of Kerry on a windsurf board.
Which made me think: since Dowd has started down the path of the Wellesley-Yale axis of genteel sports analogies, perhaps we can help out, providing the pundit with some apt metaphors for future columns. How about:
- Yachting: Hillary’s deft gybe to port left Edwards luffing.
- Polo: Barack’s smartly executed tail shot in the debate’s final chukker carried the day.
- Cricket: Edwards fielded the question neatly on his knees in front of slip.
All cordially invited to revise and extend.