Metaphor

With a delicious excerpt, Michael Bérubé rescues three paragraphs of an an excellent New Yorker article about our recent foreign policy madness that has already disappeared from the web.

Once, a group of travellers were on a perilous journey, in the course of which they had to cross a river. Unluckily, their guide forgot the location of the bridge, so the party had to ford the river, which, at the place they then found themselves, was shallow but very wide. After several minutes of wading through the icy water, the travellers began to grumble, “This guide is worthless! Let us abandon him and find another!” Sensing the discontent of his charges, the guide cleverly led them into a deeper part of the river, where the current was stronger and the footing more treacherous. “Help us!” the travellers cried. “Esteemed guide, do not abandon us!”

Someone needs to explain to The New Yorker that you put the archives on the web, since you can't sell them, but not the current issue, which you can sell — not the other way around!

Update: Evidently someone did tell them: behold.