Today’s Examiner has an opinion piece by Noemie Emery that is just so ironical, I had to blog it! It relies on a metaphor.

This metaphor takes five paragraphs to unspool.

Suppose you called the plumber to unstop your toilet, and he ignored the toilet, and spent his time and your money building a deck in your yard.

Suppose you told him you didn’t need a deck, or didn’t need a deck now, or would think about the deck later, after he unstopped the toilet. And suppose he ignored you and went on building the deck while the toilet began to back up and spill over.

And when you complained, he told you the toilet was just a distraction—-like a tracking poll, or whatever—-and that the deck he was building was just what you needed to make property values go up.

You replied that even if the back yard had a gazebo and fountain, no one would purchase a house with unusable plumbing. He said you were letting details obscure your view of the big picture, and that he was following the lead of the firm’s esteemed founder, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a local legend in the home contracting universe, who, when called in to unplug the toilets back in the old days, installed a patio, and put in a swing for the children.

You said that as you remembered, he put in the patio after he saw to the toilet, whereas while he was busy with planning the sundeck, the toilet’s condition had gotten much worse.

Whew! Long way to go to read that:

The plumber of course is not Joe, but President Barack Obama, the toilet is the national and global economy, and the sundeck is the health care and other offensives on which he is wasting your money, and most of his time.

Problem is, Emery’s editor has a job much like a plumber’s—you’re paid to remember to turn off the mains before you unscrew the supply lines, so you don’t get a jet of water in the face.