"Some academics are mounting a defense of Loomis, as if he had transgressed no boundary of civility. I think he did. It’s bad enough to blow your lid and blame someone you dislike for a tragedy he had nothing to do with, but unacceptable for a professor to suggest, even rhetorically, that violence is warranted."
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Dr. Loomis "blew his lid?"
No, I'm pretty sure Dr. Loomis doesn't even have a lid.
See, that's a metaphor for something else; being very angry and reacting inappropriately. Generally it's only non-native speakers who take a metaphors literally, and when they do, miscommunication runs rampant. (Well... not literally rampant.)
Wanting someone's head on a stick? A metaphor for wanting that person to be publicly punished for something they did, thus made an example of. To (willfully or otherwise) misunderstand that fairly common idiom as a call to violence and “eliminationist rhetoric” is, well, kind of transparent.
I would think having too many writers at National Review who consistently took metaphorical statements literally would cause heads to roll. (though not literally, one hopes.)
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(Thought I saw that it had posted over there while I was finishing this post here. Either I was mistaken--the guess I'm going with for now--or it was moderated away after the fact.)
.gif)
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