With each new Official Congressional Budget Crisis scheduled every three months, you would think there would be some repetition in terminology. Thankfully, the United States Department of Meme Affairs in Washington has graciously provided cartoonists with a new set of metaphors. Last year, we were all about to jump off the fiscal cliff, but this year we're faced with sequestration.
"Sequestration" sounds like it would, you know, hurt. A lot. As in, "no one expects the Spanish Sequestration," or "members of the House Ways and Means Committee were subjected to a mass sequestration ritual."
Ouch.
Sequestration also has a subset of handy phrases that cartoonists can really get all sequestered about. "Across the board" is a phrase that's been hanging in my head for a few days, but haven't figured out how to make it work. I did use "kick the can" the other day, and there's still hope for "mandatory cuts" as potential editorial cartoon phrases toward the end of the week, when the sequestration hits the fan.
Sequestration Happens.
In any event, the sequestration is scheduled for Friday.
Unless we all get sequestrated/sequestered/sequestrationed (you pick) by a meteor.
Then we're all sequestered.
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Jack Ohman joined The Sacramento Bee in 2013. He previously worked at the Oregonian, the Detroit Free Press and the Columbus Dispatch. His work is syndicated to more than 200 newspapers by Tribune Media Services. Jack has won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Scripps Foundation Award, the national SPJ Award, the National Headliner Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 and the Herblock Prize in 2013. He has written and illustrated 10 books, many of them about fly fishing. Jack has three grown children.
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