Watch out a Tsunami is coming! Consider this your early warning.

This time, it won’t be waves rushing to our shores, but it will be a tidal wave of political and marketing metaphors capitalizing on the disaster.

One could disagree with this prediction by citing the fact that people/companies are doing exactly the opposite–that is dropping their use of the Tsunami term including the pending name change of Tsunami Research of St. Louis, MO.

However, just as water can pull back from the shore before a big tsunami hits, the reduction in use of the terminology short-term can be an early warning for political metaphor mis-use. Since domestic politics over the past decade has been largely reduced to the sound bite, I don’t think politicians will be able to resist the temptation to utilize disaster terms no matter how inappropriate. Here are my predictions for the Pols who will first co-op Tsunami terminology for their campaigns:

• Hilary Clinton will talk about our coming “Healthcare Tsunami“
• Al Sharpton will describe America’s “Racial Tsunami”
• Not wanting the “T” word to be co-opted solely by the Left, Russ Limbaugh will scream about the problems associated with the “Illegal Immigrantion Tsunami” washing up on our shores.
• Fortunately, the metaphors will burn out when George Bush, in a final attempt to push through his privitization plan, will cite the coming “Tsocial Tsecurity Tsumani“.

Note: Subsequent to writing the above post but before posting it, I came across the following quote from Columbia University Economist Jeffrey Sachs in his poverty report to the UN where he describs the scourge of preventable diseases in the third world as the “silent tsunami”. (The metaphors are already starting).

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 7:50 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.