Beware of The Blob

Mass of toxic sludge a perfect metaphor

A friend who shares the same politics and I were talking the other day about what image, what photograph, could best sum up the current administration when the sad, inevitable day arrives that either of us are forced to explain to some inquiring kid about what the hell happened to America in the last eight years. It wasn’t that the photo had to be specifically related to something the adminstration had done, per se, or been directly involved with (though its penchant for extreme secrecy and malice precludes ever ruling that possibility out), but a single image that conveyed all that needed to be said about this presidency. There was this, or perhaps this. My friend thought this would be as good a candidate as any.

And then, lo and behold, the always great Mark Morford appeared and tipped the country off about this. A 1,500 mile-wide, rank, shapeless mass of putrid junk—a floating landfill—far out in the Pacific Ocean; an amorphous blob composed mainly of the plastic ephemera we throw away that traveled from land to sea to end up as this giant clump of toxic nastiness so foul, so unnatural, that Mother Nature herself had to banish it out into the farthest reaches of the open ocean.

It was then we both decided that this thing, this revolting ugly mass, was the perfect metaphor for the Cheney administration and all the misery it had caused. Some things are just too much for a single photo.