Is how metaphors become memes. Take one that's glided with swanlike grace into the stream of our economic discourse this summer:
With both parties competing for the mantle of austerity, they’re acting a bit like two crazed medeival (sic) doctors leeching a patient who’s already suffering from catastrophic blood loss.
That's
Adam Serwer on July 28 of this year, regarding the pending debt ceiling deal. Three days later, when the deal was announced, behold
Paul Krugman:
So those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.
