Oh, dear. Well, given that I've been perfectly sanguine about claiming that Jimmy Carter is the Worst.President.Ever. -- I can't object to people who feel that way about Bush.
I mean, does it really depend which president you think is the best or the worst? That's a value judgment, nothing necessarily irrational about value judgments, just because we may disagree.
Unless you don't think it's possible for one of the 43 to have been the best and another to have been the worst, at least in the eyes of any given beholder, which seems like a strange claim to me.
At any rate, I like hyperbole. I like metaphors, even strained ones. Being a good listener means being willing to work with the speaker, give her your ear and go part of the way on your own.
So -- is it so awful to suggest that abortion, as a political choice, has caused something equivalent to a holocaust? What is a holocaust, anyway? Extensive loss of life, especially by fire. Ok, so abortion doesn't involve fire, but each abortion, ipso facto, involves loss of life, and millions of abortions seems like tremendous loss of life to me.
I could also say, well, domestic cats have caused a holocaust of wild songbirds.
And American diet has caused a holocaust of fat people who dug their own graves with their teeth, to use another metaphor.
It's a tad overwrought, probably would benefit from the editor's pencil, but there aren't any editors on the Internet. We have our own mental Manuals of Style.
I don't like mean people, and prefer to avoid stupid people and people who can't think above the level of a cliche, but purple prose isn't necessarily a sin in my book, if the person is funny or otherwise interesting. |
