Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Return of Nigel Tufnel

Well, not really. But Jonathan Gurwitz brings the fictional headbanger back from obscurity in his latest column.
His contention is that Obama’s stimulus plan is like trying to turn the volume up to 11 the way the fictional Nigel did on his amplifiers in the mockumentary “Spinal Tap”. The only problem with this analogy is that we are not talking about spending stimulus dollars that don’t exist. The money will be there, borrowed no doubt, but there none-the-less.
Perhaps if the Federal Reserve was threatening to lower the interest rates to -1, then the Spinal Tap analogy would be applicable. But as it is, I think the more apt analogy would be that of firefighters spraying water on a raging fire. The stimulus package is the equivalent of spraying a whole bunch more water in order to get the fire under control.
Republicans are essentially arguing that it is more important right now to conserve our water than it is to put out the fire.

But the reference to Nigel Tufnel naturally brings back memories of that disagreeable chap who used that pseudonym on Bill Crawford’s now defunct blog. “Nigel” seemed to be most intent on disparaging me personally and arguing in particular about the covert status of Valerie Plame and the question as to whether or not Karl Rove broke the law.
Since “Nigel” would never comment on my blog and because Bill ultimately deleted his entire blog before vanishing into the ether, there is now no record of our lengthy and protracted debate on this subject. However, I did make reference to it in several posts on my blog here, here and here.

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