Less CNN – More Elmo!!

Watching Sesame Street with my toddler the other day I learned a valuable lesson in politics. It was through a metaphor, of course, but I find that all insights and information gleaned through such mnemonic devices as metaphors and similes tend to stick with us longer because we then have more than one way to remember them.

This particular lesson came in the form of a bird with a broken wing. It was flapping and attempting flight. It thrashed about, sort of going in a circle with its lopsided locomotion. The bird needs to fly to survive. It needs food. It needs to escape predators. It needs both of its wings working together, in synchronization,  and cooperation…or it will die.

Now, of course, Sesame Street was more lighthearted in their predictions. They are there to teach, not terrify. Besides, this particular bird would need to lose quite a bit of weight if it were to ever take flight, but that’s not the point.

No matter the bird, no matter the wing, left or right, if one is broken the bird cannot function. In fact, one wing may not even be broken, both could be full of energy and spunk, but if they refuse to cooperate, to work together, that bird will just flounder around like a fish on land. If those wings, both right and left, don’t stop flapping pointlessly and start working together this bird, this big old badass bald eagle is going to starve, or be picked off by some predator…and die.