Editorialists paint a picture
President Barack Obama gets behind the wheel of the new Chevy Volt, during his tour of the General Motors Auto Plant in Hamtramck, Mich., Friday. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The art of writing often employs the mechanism of explaining the unfamiliar by comparing it to things or events with which we all are familiar. Done well it can enlighten. Done with a certain puckishness it can paint a rather amusing image for the mind.
Take the lede on an Investor's Business Daily editorial:
"It wasn't exactly Michael Dukakis riding in a tank wearing a Snoopy helmet, but it was close. President Obama, who reportedly hasn't driven an inch himself since taking office, visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit on Friday to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off an assembly line. It was a perfect image, as the American economy is being driven off a cliff by this White House."
That is the text version of at least two editorial cartoons. Then they took the gloves off and stopped being nice. The editorialists described all the tax money that went into creating a four-passenger electric-powered car that gets 40 miles per charge and takes four hours to recharge.
"Imagine Rube Goldberg with $50 billion," they asked readers to envision.
