Football Analogies Run Amok

When ideas and arguments fail, politicians resort to sports analogies. And most of the time, regrettably, the sport they pick is football. Witness the Governor’s press conference yesterday regarding his tax hike plan. Close your eyes, and you can almost hear the crashing pads:

“I’m a good fourth-quarter player,” [Kaine] said of the measure, introduced yesterday at a news briefing at the Capitol, which at times resembled an anemic pep rally.

“Anemic pep rally.” Were Craig and Arianna in the back of the room?

In spite of that, the football lingo kept flowing:

“The time for kicking the can down the road is over,” he said at the Patrick Henry Building. “Adult leadership means taking adult responsibility.”

Kick the can. Maybe this was really just a dress rehearsal for a new “Our Gang” series.

As for the adult leadership thing, well… the less said about politicians and adult behavior the better (particularly on a family blog).

But right when it seems as though the football imagery was spent and we were consigned to another Hal Roach short, Ward Armstrong boldly leaps into the gap:

“I’m ready to carry the ball, coach.”

Just like Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels.


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Comments

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    not football.

    basketball has four quarters too.

    pep rallies – any sport.

    kicking the can – nothing to do with sports at all. has to do with, uh, cans, and maybe recycling.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    My neighborhood was so tough we played kick the can with 55 gallon drums.

    Always hated team sports. Played little league baseball, once. I hit three triples, and after the game the older guys beat the crap out of me.

    After that, sports analogies were mostly lost on me.

    RH

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “the less said about politicians and adult behavior the better”

    I’m as guilty as anyone in using disparaging descriptions of politicians but sometimes it is good to think of them as

    “people we elected to represent us”

    to signify that these folks that we often say are despicable – we voted for them…

    🙂

  4. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “tough concepts”

    the one I really like is “team player” which means you go along to get along which invariably leads to disaster…

    “team player” means “group think”

    aka Bear Stearns…

  5. French Donald Mackes, Jr. Avatar
    French Donald Mackes, Jr.

    I’ve always liked “It ain’t over till its over.”

    http://www.votefrench.com/

  6. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    I would stop complaining about the Virginia state legislature if they would sing this one song (even once):

    http://www.haruth.com/HAILSKINS.wav

    I sing it every day from August to December (January in good years).

    Go ‘Skins

  7. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Groveton, Have you finished your trip to Amsterdam yet? Any more impressions?

  8. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Jim:

    I flew into London from Amsterdam this morning. So, the Amsterdam leg is done but I am still in Europe. I’ll post some observations about Amsterdam and London over the weekend. Right now, I need to continue my “pub poll”.

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Groveton,
    You sure seem to be going to Amsterdam a lot and it is beginning to look suspicious.

    Peter Galuszka

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Perhaps Groveton is the guy on the Amstel Light commercial who is hangig on the light poll juggling the soccer ball with his feet!

    TMT

  11. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    My trips to Amsterdam are purely professional in nature. I do spend some of my free time considering human settlement patterns. The fact that I do this considering in coffee houses should be of no consequence to the posters on this site – with one exception. During a particularly long contemplation of human settlement patterns in an Amsterdam coffee house I began speaking fluent Risse-glish. I was talking Zentrums, dooryards and clusters with the Dutch patrons of the coffee house. Then I got ridiculously hungry and went out to eat. The restaurant served Amstel and I had a few. On the way home I noticed that a cat had climbed up a light pole and could not get down. Being a good samaritan I climbed up the pole to rescue the cat. Little did I know that this was a trap set by anti-EMR forces. No sooner did I reach the top of the pole, the supporters of the kinds of human development demanded by humans began to pelt me with soccer balls. I did my best to kick them away from me. Unfortunately, the whole episode was obviously a propaganda event since I have seen the sad video on TV. Well, nobody ever said that being an international champion of functional human settlement patterns would be easy.

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