Better Metaphors Needed

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by publius

A quick thought on this:

Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday.

What’s so depressingly funny about this behavior is that, if you tried to pitch it as a novel, the publisher would reject it as being too cliched and over the top. I mean, government officials actually sleeping with oil company employees? Doing drugs with them? I mean, come on. Your metaphors are way too heavy-handed. Why not just name the characters Money Sack Head Johnson and Prostitute Perkins. Come back when you can add more subtlety to your characters. No one would ever buy this.

In other news, lipstick.

17 thoughts on “Better Metaphors Needed”

  4. Gary,
    The appropriate metaphor would be the detective confronting the two murder suspects.
    Det.: Suspect 1, I think you did it because you have the victim’s blood on your hands, and he owed you money.
    Suspect 2, I think you did it because you have blood in your veins, and you knew the victim’s brother.

  5. Talk about heavy handed; they named the coke-using character G__g_ W. and just changed the last name to “Smith”. At least cut the part about him working for an oil company!

  7. “Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to have a story; fiction is hard.”
    Right. Hack plot elements are a critical, under-appreciated form of evidence that the universe is real. 😉
    But… You could get away with this in a movie script, I bet: The studios would appreciate the excuse for tawdry sex scenes.

  8. You could get away with this in a movie script, I bet.

    Only on a limited basis. If the movie plot had whole groups of corrupt officials sleeping with the enemy, it’d overwhelm. In spy and intrigue novels, for instance, there’s rarely more than one traitor.

  9. Only on a limited basis. If the movie plot had whole groups of corrupt officials sleeping with the enemy, it’d overwhelm.
    LEPORELLO: Allow me to read you the list, madam,
    Of my employer’s lobbying efforts.
    I warn you, you may not like what you hear.
    From the Treasury, six hundred and forty,
    From the State Department, two hundred and thirty one,
    Ninety one from Justice, sixty from Defense,
    But from the Department of the Interior, one thousand and three!

  10. Someone prominent (might have been Voltaire, although he is a bit early for the real trash) said that was is to stupid/bad to be spoken on a stage can still be sung (i.e. what is too insipid for the theatre can still be successful as an opera). Today “singing” can be replaced with “special effects” and “opera” with cinema”. I don’t know how often I have seen the sentence (or a variant of it): America provided the stars and Britain the actors for this movie ;-). Alas, bygone are the days when those terms were not mutually exclusive!*
    *Gary, yes I know there are still some stars that can act (and some are even American ;-))

  11. Someone prominent (might have been Voltaire, although he is a bit early for the real trash) said that was is to stupid/bad to be spoken on a stage can still be sung
    Beaumarchais.

  12. People responsible for the public interest use their power to get money, sex, drugs, and other perks for themselves and their friends.
    There is no metaphor here. This is what corruption *is*.
    I’d like to know Dennet and Smith’s backgrounds. They’ve both been on the job for quite a while. How did they get there?
    Hey, does anyone remember ’94 and the “Contract With America”, when the very big deal was Congresspeople writing overdrafts on their Congressional bank accounts?
    We didn’t know how good we had it.
    Thanks –

  13. I think the Dems need to trot out the Contract with America and show that the Republicans were utter failures in reaching their own stated goals. It’s not just Bush who cannot run a country, it’s the entire party.

  14. The NYT story (by Charlie Savage) buries this line at the end:
    “Two female employees “engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts,” the reports’ cover memo said, adding that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms’ length.”
    __________________________________ *
    *Please insert your own punchline here.

  15. The NYT story (by Charlie Savage) buries this line at the end:
    “Two female employees “engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts,” the reports’ cover memo said, adding that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms’ length.”
    __________________________________ *
    *Please insert your own punchline here.

  17. Potpourri on a Saturday afternoon

    Still playing catch-up from the past few days. Here’s some non-election stuff. POLITICS North Texas house burns because local authorities…- Wow — to protect against some sort of vague threat…

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