This time metaphor maven himself George Lakoff, on The Berkeley Blog, weighs in (if you’ll pardon the metaphor) on the ubiquitous ‘fiscal cliff metaphor: “There are two morals here. First, metaphors cannot be proposed at will and be expected to work, even if they are intended to fit reality better than existing metaphors. Second, when metaphors are tightly integrated, they are going to be hard to replace and we may have to live by them, as misleading as they may be. The national economic debate will most likely continue to be about the misleading fiscal cliff, not the reality that ‘austerity bomb’ is intended to convey. This is a sad scientific truth.”