The Horror, the Horror

It's funny, but it also makes you want to cry. In her NY Times column today, the ever-irrepressible Maureen Dowd uses a string of horror-movie analogies to describe the recent congressional battle over the debt ceiling. From the great Universal Pictures franchises (Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, et al.) to Vincent Price and William Castle flicks to The Exorcist, Jaws, Halloween, and Alien, Dowd manages to work in witty references to just about every cinematic shocker from the 1930s through the late '70s that you can imagine. She doesn't allude to the more recent subgenre of torture porn (Saw and its offspring), but she easily could have, given how torturous the sad, sorry spectacle in D.C. was to watch as it played out in the media. I thought of zombies—yes, Dowd does mention them—because the image of brain-devouring ghouls jibes neatly in my mind with the Tea Party crowd and what they've done to intelligent political discourse.