Great Moments In Historical Analogies

As rhetorical devices go, we're enormous fans of whipping out one's dick and slapping it on the table to make a point. (Ask any of the interns, who are required to attend our daily 7pm editorial meeting, even though they're forbidden to speak.) So we were totally psyched to see US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Reno Napolitano do just that at a press conference in Mexico City yesterday. Asked about Joaquin "Chapo" Guzmán, the most wanted man in Mexico, Napolitano drew an analogy with Osama bin Laden, who got a great big dose of Uncle-Sam-says-hello, even though it took ten years to deliver it. The implication was obvious.

Of course, in a country that raised a stink about accepting a billion-and-a-half dollars of drug fighting aid because it encroached on its sacred national sovereignty, maybe an operation that involved sending Navy SEAL Team Six into an ally's sovereign territory to carry out an extra-judicial assassination isn't the best analogy to be making in front of the assembled Mexican press.  (Though, as far as we can tell, we're the only ones complaining about this, which we see as a sign of enormous progress.)

Anyway, this whole post is just an excuse to run this excellent photo from El Universal's front page, in which Mexico's Government Secretary, Alejandro Poiré,  shows up at the press conference stinking of gin and tonic, and pretends to shoot Secretary Napolitano in the back of the head, narco-style.  Word to tha muthafuckin' streets!

[By the way, the New Yorker article linked to above is friggin' excellent, if you haven't read it.]