Are they playing Good Conservative, Bad Conservative?

by David Safier

I'm happy to say, I've never been in one of those Good Cop, Bad Cop situations where one cop threatens to beat the crap out of you, then the other steps in and "saves" you. But what we're getting out of the Russell Pearce/Jan Brewer confrontation sounds pretty close to the scenes I've seen in the movies.

Pearce lunges at the schools, threatening cuts above and beyond what they've already had to bear. Then Brewer writes an op ed in Monday's Republic saying she's here to protect Arizona from that out-of-control Senate President and preserve funding for schools.

Who knows, Pearce may actually be the attack dog he plays in the Senate, and Brewer may genuinely want to soften the blow. But I won't be fighting back tears and saying "Thank you, thank you!" to the governor if she manages to get back some of the funds cut by the Senate.

DR. WORD QUESTIONS A BREWER METAPHOR: As a college English major who spent far too many hours indulging in literary criticism of metaphors in poetry and prose, I'm trained to suck the marrow out of literary imagery. But for the life of me, I'm not sure what Brewer and her ghost writers meant when they put this in the op ed:

Budget cuts should be targeted and permanently reduce the size and scope of state government, not simply "thin the soup."

The closest I can get to what this means is: Instead of giving the various agencies of government full bowls of soup, Brewer wants to cut the portions in half. What she doesn't want to do is cut the portions in half, then fill the rest of the bowl with water. but it seems to me, the amount of nourishment — or funding — is the same either way, give or take a cup of hot water.

Either way, whether Brewer and Pearce reduce the size of the portion or thin the soup, I see Oliver Twist as the face of school children all over Arizona saying, "Please, Pearce and Brewer sir, I want some more."

(Something tells me, I stole the good cop/bad cop idea from a Craig McDermott post. If so, hat tip to Craig for the idea. Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery — and admitting a possible theft is better than playing dumb.)