Friday, March 23, 2012
Lightweight Obama's Heavy-Handed Cliche
Someone has noticed--and is having great fun with the fact--that Obama uses the cliche "punching about their weight" with excessive and embarrassing regularity. So far, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Dutch, the Irish and the Phillipinos are said to be engaged in the move. (Notice, though, that he would never say any such thing about a miniscule nation that really is punching about its weight in so many endeavours--scientific, entreprenurial, medical, etc.--i.e. Israel.)
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Scaramouche, I am second to none in my admiration of your wit, intellectual panache, verbal dexterity, and erudition . . . but I can see that that your knowledge of the "sweet science" requires remediation. Israel punches well _above_ its weight economically, scientifically, and militarily . . . if it punched _about_ its weight it would resemble, say, New Jersey in those fields. (The allusion is to the ability of some boxers to punch harder than their weight category would imply, e.g., a welterweight who is able to trade punches effectively with a light heavyweight. I recommend watching videos of the LaMotta vs. Robinson or Graziano vs. Robinson fights to see classic examples, from boxing's golden age, of three fighters all of whom could punch well above their weight.)
Thanks for the explanation, CP. I'm not a huge fan of the "sweet science," but I'm not unfamiliar with it. It's Obama who might want to brush up on it, since in his hands a useful boxing expression becomes little more than a banal and puerile cliche via thoughlessness and overuse.
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