In her latest column, my favorite New York Times opinion writer, Gail Collins, has outdone herself. In her primer on the S. Carolina primary, she unleashes a string of pop culture metaphors for Newt Gingrich.
Writes Collins:
To understand Newt Gingrich, you have to envision a mixture of “Kill Bill” and “Carrie,” after Sissy Spacek gets hit with the bucket of blood. His only mission in life is getting even with Mitt Romney and the rich minions who paid for all those anti-Newt ads in Iowa. He is exactly like Sweeney Todd mixed with Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.” And maybe a smidge of “Shogun Assassin.”
She then goes on to describe the Gingrich-supporting ad “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” as making the former Bain capitalist look worse than evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
One of the reasons I love Collins is her rapid fixation on the story of the Mitt driving to Canada with Seamus, the Romney pooch, in a rooftop car carrier. Like a German Shepherd whose jaw is clamped down on a chew toy and won’t let go, Collins returns to the story of Seamus again and again.
And, in this, it turns out she has an ally in Gingrich. As she notes:
… now Newt’s Web site has a video that basically asks whether America will elect a president who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. Which is, of course, an excellent question.
