Last week The New Yorker led off with an uncharacteristically labored analogy/editorial from Adam Gopnik, who pointed out that the Titanic had a twin sister, the Olympic, which sailed unharmed through the frozen northern seas for decades and (he suggested) so could we.
"It reminds us that our imagination of disaster is dangerously more fertile than our imagination of the ordinary. You have certainly heard of the Titanic; you have probably never heard of the Olympic."
Okay, that's sweet, but doesn't it seem rather besides the point? Far more memorably last week a snarky Internet commentator not nearly as famous as Gopnik found a detail from the familiar Titanic story/metaphor that made a far bigger splash on the intertubes, because it briliantly dramatized what has become an all-too-frequent pattern among deniers. Too often the likes of James Inhofe (who wore long underwear to work at the Senate last week, to show that the evidence for global warming is "laughable") will exalt an ephemeral detail — a cold snap — in an attempt to wave off the facts. This new metaphor fought that mockery with its own mockery.
Take it away, Nerdy Jewish Girl!
Re: global warming and the cold weather "Liberals keep telling me the Titanic is sinking but my side of the ship is 500 feet in the air."
— justine (@nerdyjewishgirl) January 4, 2014
Kit Stolz 