Monday, June 26, 2006

How Shall We Find the Concord of this Discord?

A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
The Seattle Times has run an unsigned editorial about the resignation of Dean Logan.

For those who are not familiar with him, Mr. Logan was Elections Director for King County, Washington during the late Gubernatorial* race. Mr. Logan's department mislaid ballots, certified ballots that were in clear and open violation of state elections law, and kept finding "lost" ballots until Democrat Christine Gregoire edged ahead of Republican Dino Rossi. The ill will generated by that debacle will poison Washington state politics for a generation.

Now Mr. Logan is to decamp to sunnier climes of Los Angeles County. I wish him safety, for Los Angeles is rough political scene. That kind of electoral jiggery-pokery will have Orange County rioting like South Central.

But what I want to look briefly at that editorial. It contains two paragraphs of amazing prose:
Logan was by no means perfect. His office made many unacceptable mistakes during the 2004 election. He accepted responsibility for the missteps and then worked tirelessly and cooperatively with three committees or task forces to fix the problems.

But few people can withstand incessant ranting of talk radio and sometimes rabid musings of the blogosphere, not to mention heavy-handed political posturing from the County Council.
So in the first paragraph we have "unacceptable mistakes" for which Mr. Logan has "accepted responsibility." I think I know what they mean, but someone needed to see the conflict between those sentences before they went to print.

The next paragraph contains the coining of the phrase, "rabid musings" of the blogosphere. Rabid evokes images of uncontrolled ferocity straining to break the leash, while "musings" evokes those of quite, even ironic, reflections. How do those get along?

Finally we have "heavy-handed political posturing." The metaphores have not been merely mixed, they've been blended to a frappe like a mochaccino.

Of course I don't believe a word of this stuff; but, once again, it's like the Democrats are sending in the second-string team.

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* I just love that word, "Gubernatorial." It's like all state executive officers are at heart, Jimmy Carter. Gubernatorial!

1 comment:

Taleena said...

word of correction, Rossi is a republican

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