Friday, April 20, 2007

Colbert reinvents a wheel

Colbert's "Metaphor off" with Sean Penn last night was brilliant. But Colbert told Penn "Metaphors be with you." I now have it on good authority that George Lakoff used to have that up on his door back in the early 1980s. Turns out, the joke is all over the place — see the image.

Well, Stephen, you lost to Sean, and we just can't rub it in. Just do us a favor: Please crush George Clooney into molecular dust during your upcoming Hyperbole Off. (See here for details, and video from the Penn show.)

2 comments:

Ben Zimmer said...

Michael Silverstein has an unpublished paper from 1981 entitled "Metaforces of Power in Political Oratory." The last line is "Metaforce be with you."

Mr. Verb said...

It must have been floating around at the time ... probably impossible to determine a precise origin.