"Their noses and ears full of tufts of hair, their brains crackling with mental electricity, their flappy trousers hoiked biffin-tight, and their little odd socks showing, they reassured the hoi polloi that, although they were very clever, and we needed and valued them as a society, these people were loonies."

— Lee, Stewart (b. 1968)


Date
March 9, 2013
Metaphor
"Their noses and ears full of tufts of hair, their brains crackling with mental electricity, their flappy trousers hoiked biffin-tight, and their little odd socks showing, they reassured the hoi polloi that, although they were very clever, and we needed and valued them as a society, these people were loonies."
Metaphor in Context
In those halcyon days, the entire nation would sit down with bottles of stout and plates of dripping to watch a programme in which an enthusiastically cigarette-smoking Bertrand Russell, or someone of similar super-intelligence, sat motionless in a chair and discussed for hours the finer points of philosophy in incredible detail with an equally un-televisual man. Their noses and ears full of tufts of hair, their brains crackling with mental electricity, their flappy trousers hoiked biffin-tight, and their little odd socks showing, they reassured the hoi polloi that, although they were very clever, and we needed and valued them as a society, these people were loonies.
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Stewart Lee, "Never Mind Endangered Animals -- It's the Thinkers that We Need to Save" The Observer (March 9, 2013) <Link to www.guardian.co.uk>
Date of Entry
03/10/2013

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.