Write On!, 1217 WYBJ, Vol. 40 No. 6. 50

• Author: Michael R. Smith, University of Wyoming College of Law Laramie, Wyoming
• Position: Vol. 40 6 Pg. 50

Write On!

Vol. 40 No. 6 Pg. 50

Wyoming Bar Journal

December, 2017

Bad Metaphors, Part 1: Insulting Metaphors

Michael R. Smith, University of Wyoming College of Law Laramie, Wyoming

In October of this year, the owner of the Houston Texans NFL football team came under heavy criticism for making an offensive metaphoric statement about his players during an NFL owners meeting. At the meeting, the owners were discussing the controversy over some NFL players kneeling during the national anthem as a symbol of protest against racial inequality in the American criminal justice system. While expressing his concern about the players’ form of protest and the negative effects it was having on NFL prof ts, Texans owner Bob McNair said, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.”^[1]

Being generous to Mr. McNair, one may assume that what he meant was that, in his opinion, the NFL owners can’t allow employees to determine company policy. However, by expressing his point in the form of a metaphor, Mr. McNair ended up calling NFL players prison inmates.

Mr. McNair later said the insulting implications of his metaphor were unintended, and he issued an apology: “I regret that I used that expression. I never meant to of end anyone and I was not referring to our players. I used a figure of speech that was never intended to be taken literally. I would never characterize our players or our league that way and I apologize to anyone who was of ended by it.”^[2]

Mr. McNair’s faux pas made national headlines. Many people evaluated the statement in terms of social and racial politics. Others evaluated it as an example of bad business management. I, however, as a rhetorician, evaluated the statement as an example of a dreadful use of figurative language. If Mr. McNair’s apology is to be believed, then the mistake he made in crafting his “inmate” metaphor was thinking only of the figurative meaning of the statement and neglecting to consider its literal meaning.

In the discussion of metaphors in my Advanced Legal Writing textbook, I advise that, “Writers . . . should avoid composing metaphors that may insult or of end their readers. . . . [W]riters must be cognizant of both the literal and figurative meanings of their words so as to avoid inadvertently incorporating insulting metaphors in their arguments.”^[3] Mr. McNair could have avoided national criticism if only he had heeded this advice.

Mr...