Over the years, this blog has had so many posts on the wretched “kabuki play” cliche that we gave them their own category, but we never mentioned a related pet peeve cliche of mine: “opening the kimono“. Well, in yesterday’s New York Times, the acerbic David Carr1 spun a new twist on it.
<object width=”300″ height=”28″ class=”hark_player”>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=pqfzzjdqpy”/>
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/>
<param name=”allownetworking” value=”all”/>
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”/>
<embed src=”http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=pqfzzjdqpy” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allownetworking=”all” width=”300″ height=”28″ wmode=”transparent”></embed>
</object><br/>
<a href=”http://www.hark.com/mad-men/let-them-open-the-kimono” style=”font-size: 9px; color: #ddd;” title=”Listen to Let Them Open The Kimono on Hark.com”>Let Them Open The Kimono</a>
In his article on the intense secrecy of the Bradley Manning Wikileaks trial, “In Leak Case, State Secrecy in Plain Sight” and the difficulties that has so hindered journalists and other citizens interested in the case, he has the following paragraph:
Finally, at the end of last month, in response to numerous Freedom of Information requests from news media organizations, the court agreed to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents filed in the case, suggesting it was finally unbuttoning the uniform a bit to make room for some public scrutiny.
As far as I can tell, Carr is the first writer to use this spin on the nasty cliche (although it has certainly been used before in reference to, say, soldiers undressing), which I honestly find pretty amusing. At least, unless it turns into a cliche.
- Incidentally, a resident of my home town, although we have never met. [↩]