Top Four Political Cliches that Also Sound Like Sports Cliches (and probably need to go away, regardless)
Four? Why four? Because you always see Top Five this or Top Ten that. When was the last time you saw Top Four anything? Huh?
As annoying as I tend to find them, politics-as-sports analogies abound, and for good reason—people divide themselves up into teams and support their superstar, whom they hope will elevate them all to some greater glory, just like the New England Patriots supported Tom Brady in order to…oops, never mind. And thanks to our twenty-four hour cable news world, sports clichés are repeated with the frequency of a Peyton Manning commercial for…well, pick a product. Here are four that I’ve had enough of:
4. Moving the goalposts
Moving the goalposts is a logical fallacy that has its own entry on Skepticwiki, a Wikipedia-like blog that touts itself as “the encyclopedia of skepticism, science and reason.”
I’ll just repeat some of that. “Moving the goalposts” is a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy that I found defined on an encyclopedia of reason. Enough said.
3. Knee-capping
Imagine my surprise to discover that this one doesn’t have its origins in sports, although the term is best known in the modern era thanks to skater Tonya Harding’s single-minded determination to destroy the career of rival Nancy Kerrigan with the help of several thugs, one of whom was her ex-husband with whom she had recently reconciled. Hmm…destroying rivals…reconciling with estranged husbands…wonder why the mainstream media’s trotting this one out…
I found the fact that Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines knee-capping as a “terroristic act” more than interesting. And I got my laugh of the day thanks to Wikipedia’s entry for the term, which informed me that “This torture-related article is a stub.” My apologies for my sick sense of humor, but no matter how I choose to interpret that phrase, I end up with a case of the dark-funnies.
2. In it to win it.
Because “In it to lose it” just doesn’t have the same ring to it (assonance being what it is and all)—not to mention the fact that it doesn’t make any sense. So could we just shut up about the “I’m/She’s/He’s in it to win it” already? It’s obvious, thanks.
And the political cliché cum sports term that most needs to go away is:
1. Momentum
Whether it’s the basketball team that keeps draining threes and gets the crowd on their side or the candidate who’s coming off a primary win, momentum, in that moment, means everything—the score be damned.
But when the crowd’s gone and all the confetti’s been swept up (crowds and confetti being two more things than can bridge politics and sports), what people will realize is that a momentum swing in the final minute, no matter how exciting, doesn’t mean much if the momentum switches to the team that’s already down by twenty points.
