The dominant metaphor here
is mimesis. The act of mimicry.
Reproduction. Imitation. We’re
talking the facts of facsimiles.
Echoes and iterations. Growth hormones
in every pot and two carbon copies
of carbon footprints in every garage.
Our home movies play like tired reruns,
exit polls from Sunday’s big game.
Every ballot a quilt with a two-party pattern.
Cut from the same cloth. Duplication.
Dupes. Governments talk
about the people and the proletariat;
I talk about the suckers and the mugs.
The dominant technology here
is motion capture. The only available
revolution is on the dance dance floor
and your heroes are playing plastic guitars.
These movies were made to capture
our movements, not the emotions on our faces.
Not even Charles Foster Kane
could get himself elected governor,
caught in a love nest with his mistress,
called a love pirate by the press.
The dominant medium here is forgery.
With apologies to Marshall Mcluhan,
the medium isn’t the message,
it’s a metaphor. A thousand copies
to every original: a van Gogh
on every wall and a Stradivarius on every shelf.
The metaphor is the message,
with apologies to Lakoff and Johnson.
The non-sensual similarities
within a canon of candidates
can be partly clarified this way:
The magician is just an actor,
playing the part of a magician.
Even the war of all against all
has rules of engagement, and this
campaign, this war of one against one,
self against self, has rules to its game.
But some of us follow instructions
that Simon never said.
Call it the fair use of abuse doctrine,
call it sticks and stones and super-PAC funded
broken bones. Call it collect. Citizens
United sets the dial tone for our public discourse,
chief executive officers on the caller i.d.
and our fingers rubbing the redial button raw,
recalling our mistakes instead of governors.
We’ll find ourselves wherever we look,
from the simplest eukaryotic cell
to the brilliant, bursting flame out
of a supernova. A child
not only plays at being a grocer or
a teacher, but also at being a windmill
or a train. We know our politicians
by their bumper stickers and gaffes.
Like Orson said, we only
sit through Shakespeare
in order to recognize the quotations.
–Andrew Rihn