Rant: That's it, MSNBC. No more metaphors

According to this MSNBC.com article, "The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush's plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants".

This is a clear sign that MSNBC is incapable of using metaphors responsibly and henceforth MSNBC is banned from using metaphors.

A metaphor is, "a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance". In this example the metaphore is "drove a stake".

Now, I know a few things about stake driving, the means by which stakes are driven, and situations in which one would drive a stake. And none of these things, in any way, resemble a senate vote on an immigration bill.

First of all, the bill is not a vampire. And in no way is the immigration bill vampiric. If the bill "sucked the blood of white americans" or "recoiled from the garlicy stench of justice" then, maybe, it could, kinda, be said to be vampiric. If the bill could turn into a bat, or had no reflection, or, at the very least, hid from the sun then it could be argued to have some vampiric aspects.

But as it currently is the bill is not a vampire and is not vampiric. The bill is also not a werewolf, frankenstein, or mummy. It could maybe be argued by be a reanimated corpse, as it had been killed once by the senate and then came back with some modifications.

Yes, actually. That's a very good comparison. The immigration bill is currently a zombie bill. It was a living bill struck down by the senate which was then reanimated by a dark wizard, Bush, so that it could do the dark wizard's bidding, which is, presumably, to get illegal immigrants to vote for Republicans in '08.

But even if we can say that this is a zombie bill the notion of stake driving does not apply. One does not use a stake to defeat a zombie. In fact, driving a stake through the heart of a zombie would have no effect at all. Zombies are killed by means of fire or decapitation.

So, really, the sentence should have been, "The Senate on Thursday set fire to and decapitated President Bush's zombie bill which would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants so that they could vote for Republicans in '08".

But since MSNBC could not figure this out they are heretofore banned from using metaphors.