Contrived Metaphor of the Week: Baby Elephant Mitt

BY RAJA KRISHNA

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a great metaphor. And boy did the admakers over at Orang Tua Group, the firm KayaKing Peanuts hired to make ad you see below, deliver. As far as print ads go, it’s pretty famous. It depicts one elephant performing the Heimlich Maneuver on a baby elephant choking on a Jumbo Peanut. In case you didn’t get it, this is funny because elephants are commonly depicted as peanut-lovers, and the fact that such a large animal would choke on a seemingly innocuous snack…forget it. It’s a funny ad, dammit.

It’s unclear whether the Indonesian ad firm intended their ad to be a perfect visual for Mitt Romney’s relationship with the Republican Party when they launched their promotional campaign in 2008 (my money’s on “no”). Still, our unintentional political commentators–and their art department–deserve praise for producing such an apt depiction of Mitt’s recent struggle to resonate not only with Republicans, but with the nation as a whole.

Note: If you’re not a fan of overly contrived metaphors, click to a different article NOW. What follows probably risks breaking English. 

We can learn a lot about the way Romney operates just by analyzing this ad. As a candidate with a relatively moderate gubernatorial record, his main strategy so far has been to regurgitate current and past Republican talking points, either to reinforce (or in his case establish) an image as a true conservative, or to mask the fact that he’s not. Let’s call those Jumbo Peanuts the Republican platform and the baby elephant Mitt. The adult elephant, the one attempting the emergency resuscitation,  represents the Republican Establishment. Let’s call him Papa Priebus, since the RNC Chairman’s name has a circus-y ring to it already.

The ad depicts Romney’s main problem with the Republican Establishment: he can’t seem to choke down their platform! He’s been fed lots big–dare I say, jumbo–ideas. The problem is that when he lifts his trunk to roar them out to the nation, he ends up sounding like a feeble baby elephant instead of the leader of his party. Meanwhile, his desired message not only loses its forcefulness, it also loses its clarity.

Take healthcare for example. Everyone knows that Romney helped construct the Massachusetts healthcare scheme that was the basis for Obamacare. His talking point is simple: “What works in Massachusetts doesn’t necessarily work for the country.” Even though that’s probably a weak argument to begin with, it’s crisp and succinct. Instead of staying on message, the Republican nominee for President flip-flopped four times on healthcare in a single day!

Because of these incidents, when Romney says something extreme (or at least something that’s actually conservative), it becomes hard for me to believe. How will we ever know if Mitt really believes what he’s saying, or if his bigger, stronger, and, well, elephantine, party establishment is pulling the strings? And by pulling the strings, I mean wrenching him from behind, Heimlich style.

Dear readers, 

Metaphors are a great way to understand our surroundings, but they’re also a great way to speak in code (“Put the milk in the Cocoa Puffs”, anyone?). I’m thinking about bringing you a contrived metaphor about once a week. It’ll be horrible, but hopefully entertaining, hopefully enlightening. 

As for today’s submission, did I miss anything? Can any of you think of a way to incorporate the garlic flavoring of those jumbo nuts into the metaphor?

Thanks for reading!

-Raja