Sophie Mirabella, and a shiny mass of tinsel and baubles and glittering verbiage

Dammit.

I always used to get confused between the notion of a simile and the use of a metaphor.

Here's the handy wiki on simile:

A simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the word "like" or "as". Even though similes and metaphors are both forms of comparison, similes allow the two ideas to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas metaphors compare two things without using "like" or "as". For instance, a simile that compares a person with a bullet would go as follows: "John was a record-setting runner and as fast as a speeding bullet." A metaphor might read something like, "John was a record-setting runner. That speeding bullet could zip past you without you even knowing he was there."(John being the speeding bullet). (Confused? Happily confused, but you want more? You can find the metaphor page here).

Now, feeling forewarned and well armed, like a speeding bullet, let's turn to Sophie Mirabella in Beware the electoral Santa bearing gifts:

There’s a high-risk derivative of the time-honoured “Secret Santa” that has become quite popular in recent years. All the carefully (and not so carefully) selected gifts are pooled and one by one participants get to select and open a present. They then face a choice: keep the present they’ve just opened or forfeit it and go for another, the contents of which are unknown but with which they will be stuck.

Ornately wrapped, carefully presented gift boxes adorned with bows and baubles are, unsurprisingly, first picks. But they don’t often yield the best results.

However, it’s human to be tempted by the promise of something better, to be lured by the illusion of a grander prize.

And it’s exactly what many Australians experienced just a few months before Christmas in 2007.

Here was a shiny new ballot box option – polished, presented and tempting with a literal cornucopia of promises. Each grander than the next. Rudd was political tinsel at its shiniest.

The Howard Government by contrast was so practical, so familiar – like a brown paper package tied up with string (and who apart from Julie Andrews finds that alluring?) Besides, Australians were generally comfortable enough with the personal bounty of gifts under their own trees – the risk of the electoral Secret Santa did not seem too great. Hey, why not, they might get something better? (Beware the electoral Santa bearing gifts).

Oh dear, that's not so much a metaphor or simile as a shambling tottering edifice of linguistic abuse erected around the notion of Xmas. Can there be any better example of seasonal silliness and stupidity, or a more shiny example of a politician so enraptured with their own verbosity that they keep on scribbling like a schoolkid seeking to impress with literary cleverness and subtle allusiveness?

So practical, so familiar, like a brown paper package beloved by Julie Andrews? Oh dear, shoot yourself in the foot by shooting off at the mouth.

Because Mirabella isn't content with that for an opener - she goes on and on and on, like a class clown, keeping up the similes and the metaphors, or whatever you want to call it.

Two years on, having scrambled through the mass of tinsel, shiny bauble promises and tissue paper spin, it’s become apparent to many Australians that the box is actually empty. It was all about appearances. It was all about being new and glittery – not actually offering anything substantial.

While list-making is a seasonal sport, I won’t go into Labor’s litany of broken promises, economic failures and lack of action. It would be much longer than Santa’s list – and heavier on the naughty than the nice.

Oh enough already with the Xmas stuffing, I'm feeling stuffed like a prize goose.

She won't go into Santa's list? What about Santa's metaphor grab bag? Fat chance.

Quickly, let's start doing the short hand version of the rest of the gibberish: disappeared as quickly as a stash of batteries on Christmas morning, shouted from the chimney tops, shiny Rudd present, take the political tinsel, shiny Rudd box, dodgy Christmas marketer ...

No, no, no, I can't take any more. Enough already.

We know it's the silly season, we know you don't like Chairman Rudd, but stop with the monomaniacal metaphors, or we'll all go blind.

And then she has the cheek to top it all with this line:

I could go on – but it is the season to be charitable.

Torturing us with your tortuous English is being charitable? Sounding even more tortured in your fractured incoherent dissings and ramblings than Chairman Rudd is somehow treating us with kindness?

Oh please, oh please don't go on.

Learn to keep it short, like our favourite supreme triple smoked Xmas ham, Alan Rickman in Robin Hood:

Wait a minute. Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public, and they love him for it? That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!

Oh wait, the judges are handing me their results. It seems Ms Mirabella has been deploying what is commonly known as an 'extended metaphor':

An extended metaphor, also called a conceit, is a metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow.

And the judges have unanimously ruled that Sophie Mirabella is, by a country mile, winner of the conceited goose of the silly season scribbling contest.

The winner is entitled to receive, in ornately wrapped, carefully presented gift boxes, adorned with bows and baubles, a shiny new ballot box, a literal cornucopia of political verbiage, shiny political tinsel, brown paper and string, a pine tree, a mass of tissue paper, and a stash of batteries, of all kinds and sizes, including but not limited to AAA up to D.

Now if we can just borrow from Ambrose Bierce and his Devil's Dictionary:

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Politician: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

Platitude: The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.

Language: The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

Sorry Ambrose, way too pithy. We've decided to enrol you in the Sophie Mirabella School for Extended Metaphorical Scribbling.

Enjoy.

We look forward to reading about the way the Easter bunny explains how Chairman Rudd stole our easter eggs and hid them in the backyard, before scoffing them down like the choccy addict he is ...

(Below: and now bored by Xmas chatter in the antipodes, how about Xmas in Japan? You haven't lived until you've experienced Xmas Japanese style, and shopped at Tokyu Hands).