Top Ten Metaphors of 2008

2008 was an 11.

After overdue consideration and numerous recounts, The Metaphor Observatory has reached a reluctant concensus among staff. The 2008 Top Ten Metaphors list was particularly difficult due to the enormous diversity of metaphors used to describe the candidates of the American election and the causes of the financial crisis. While the crisis brought out many metaphors of disaster, the election brought out the most disastrous metaphors.

In 2008, the two most dominant headlines were the crisis and the election. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became editor’s backfill; the once-gripping rhetoric slipping into redundancy. Despite this, “surge“, the adopted metaphor child of the Iraq war, continues to rear offspring of its own. However, due to the now lengthy nature of the troop surge, the semantics of the word “surge” became quietly extended to include any rise in quantity for an “indefinite” period of time (see: escalation).

The year spawned mobs of animal metaphors, perhaps most timely was Blagojevich’s depiction as a rat. The over-the-toppedness nature of his hair, his underhanded deeds and his smug-induced euphoria all made for easy targets. In a normal year, he might’ve taken center stage in our top ten for this. Not this year. For the first time in ages, the press flooded the sewers of high society, forcing many other unscrupulous characters to the surface, hogging Blaggy’s stage. While describing the nature of their swindling was at times lengthy and complicated, a description of the perpe-traitors themselves was a curt curse away.

A massive groping search for words to explain the financial crisis led to one of the largest metaphor spikes in recent history. Clumsy hosts were serving up mixed metaphor and butchered simile in the TV feed trough and calling it pudding. We could only find one singular, comprehensive, coherent description of the crisis, and so awarded its author with the 2008 Metaphorist of the Year. It was the least we could do, despite all efforts.

We at the Observatory felt fulfilled filing our own description of the crisis, “economic souffle“: in our insatiable appetite for consumption, we relied on a few bad eggs who whipped up a delicate dish of an economy; one which is mostly hot air, and one in which the slightest shock would leave us deflated, hungry and angry. Observatory kitchen staff even cooked up our own saucy description of the current economy: “Smokin’!“.

And just as the economic meltdown was worthy of metaphor, so too was the multizeroferous fix. Simply titled the bailout bill (we preferred the Rube Goldberg bill), metaphors describing its vastitude would fail to stimulate our minds after years of constant exposure to Americainous hyperbole. Of course, the sticker shock alone already had us feeling senseless and outnumbered.

Meanwhile, there was some business to do on the soapbox – the presidential race. Like the crisis, this topped headlines around the world. Only in America, the devil in the details was in the demographics. There was never a shortage of such sensational material, whether it was the He V. She on the D side, or the shunamitistic groin pull McCain got from his right hand man.

Overall, 2008 was an 11. That is, there was so much activity in metaphor, and in so many subjects – and to such extremes – that the Observatory felt it needed to somehow, metaphorically represent the year. Thus, and in keeping with the tone, we borrowed our metaphor from Nigel, of Spinal Tap fame, when describing the virtues of his Marshall amplifier:

“You’re on Ten, all the way up, all the way up…Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff…Eleven. One louder.”

The annual Top Ten List of Metaphors in the Media for 2008 was compiled from a casual observation of headlines, new product names, advertisements and discourse in several forms of media around the world. The general treatment of a given story is reflected metaphorically by the tone of the description we provide. For example, we offer the tone of carelessness, incompetence and disaster to our description of “bailout“, since this was the common rhetorical frame used to describe its necessity, and the implication made by the term itself. We try our best to capture and reflect the broadest public sentiment, or the noble efforts made by the media to sway it.

As usual, the Metaphor Observatory’s top metaphors are chosen based on a magical combination of the following:
- accuracy (ie: Does it make sense as a metaphor?)
- popularity (ie: Did it catch on?)
- impact (ie: Did it successfully communicate to its audience? )
- relevance to 2008 (ie: Is it contemporary?).

The Metaphor Observatory’s Top Ten Metaphors for the year 2008:

Awarded By The Observatory:

Golden Raspberry – Audi, Own The Road (2008): This year’s Golden Raspberry is awarded to performance auto maker Audi, for their commercial “Own The Road“, featuring eager gentlemen receiving sizable chunks of pavement as gifts, complete with bits from the shoulder and across the centerline. We give our thumbed-nose thanks to Audi, for using metaphor to justify aggressive driving, and doing away with the apparently outmoded concept of “sharing” the road.

Golden Bridge – John McCain: This award is given to the newsmaker who bridges one significant news item with another from the same period, using metaphor. We note that there were drive-by shootings occuring in both war zones at the time, and these wars and the mortgage crisis were prominent figures in McCain’s campaign.

“Homeowners are the innocent bystanders in a drive-by shooting by Wall Street and Washington.” Presidential Candidate John McCain, October 22, 2008.

Golden Watch – Meltdown and Fallout: There are two recipients of this year’s Golden Watch, awarded to metaphors that have worked hard and are anxiously awaiting retirement. Longidental nuclear siblings Meltdown and Fallout topped the world’s headlines for several years, hanging out with such stars as Mark Foley, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. So, how did typesetters keep these aging metaphors alive and looking phresh? Facelifts.

Living, Breathing Metaphor of the Year – Barack Obama: Barack Hussein Obama was a surprise entry into this year’s Top Ten List. Being black while venturing into historically white turf, he visibly symbolized change. With both black and white ancestry, Christian and Muslim lineage and his peaceful disposition, he embodied racial and religious harmony, thus hope. These are desperate times; when desperate, change is hope, hence “Yes we can”. We are forced to ask, was he really elected for his policies, or as a metaphor for hope and change?

Metaphor Discovery of the Year – Heat Makes People Warm: This year, Lawrence E. Williams at the University of Colorado published a study showing a connection between physical and emotional warmth. The research, involving conversations between people while drinking either warm or cold beverages, showed that warm beverages lead to warmer receptions. To Observers, this work furthers the notion that our brains may not distinguish bewteen metaphor and reality as much as we’d like to think. Of course, what could a bunch of neuron’s know anyhow?!

Metaphorist of the Year – Paddy Hirsch: The Metaphor Observatory recorded over 8 million different metaphors for the economic crisis during 2008. However, after an external audit, it was discovered this number was somewhat overstated by our executives. There were only seven. And of those seven, only one was good enough to win its creator the title Metaphorist of the Year. Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch’s “Uncorking CDO’s”, though self-described as simile, was equally a worthy metaphor system, elegantly delivering a simple explanation of this complex concept. Hirsch joins fellow unnotified honorees George Lakoff, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs and Jon Stewart.

1) Bailout
2) Joe The Plumber
3) Angry Whopper
4) Toxic assets
5) Rock-star
6) Addiction
7) Perfect storm
8) Train wreck
9) Surge
10) Ratchet
11) Pitbull in lipstick