Friday, May 20, 2011

The Sheep Unloaded Their Entire Clip



Newt Gingrich's press secretary has a gift for producing prose that is not so much memorable as seared into your brain with a hot iron.

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

Sheep. Sheep with smoking hoof-enabled automatic weapons clutched in one foreleg and cocktail napkins in the other. There's an image I won't forget easily.

Also, that word, intimated. I don't think it means what what you think it means.

It's a rare press release that inspires not only a villanelle but also a dramatic reading by John Lithgow



Onward, my minions.

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