The Elephant in the Room

First, I want to offer my congratulations to Cheryl for being the winner of the New Badge for One-Liner Wednesday 2018-19 edition.  This phrase or metaphorical idiom is used when an important and obvious topic, which everyone present is aware of, but which isn’t discussed, because discussing this taboo topic would be considered as uncomfortable.  This has nothing to do with elephants or Republicans for that matter.  It is often said whenever a topic is thought to be important and deserves more attention than it is getting, and as a result it has become a proverb and a cliché.  It is difficult not to notice an elephant and it becomes very obvious when someone chooses to ignore one of these large creatures and just pretend that it has blended in with the background.

Not wanting to talk about something usually does not make a noticeable problem or difficult situation go away.  The elephant in the room is meant to stick out like a sore thumb, as everyone should notice that it is standing out.  This sore spot should be a very big issue that people are acutely aware of, a real hot potato, but nobody wants to talk about it perhaps because that would be politically incorrect, and they won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.  Keeping silent about things and ignoring them or actually denying that they exist does make these issues stop being problems, as once elephants are seen they will not leave our minds.

Elephants are the largest land animals on Earth, so if you encounter one of these magnificent creatures, you must at least acknowledge that it is in the room with you, as you can’t just go about your business like the elephant is invisible.  In 1814, Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769-1844), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled “The Inquisitive Man” which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but he fails to notice an elephant.  The man very carefully observes and notes lots of minor details about a room that he was in, but he leaves out the important detail of the elephant.  He was paying so much attention to small things that he missed noticing a huge one.

Yesterday while watching CNN, I felt that I saw an elephant in the room when Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that she was unaware of intelligence assessments concluding that Russia favored President Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.  She knowingly failed to directly answer some questions, because she is afraid of losing her job and she said that she believes the Russians have attempted to manipulate public confidence on both sides.  This lady is in charge of keeping our country safe and she should get her priorities straight and probably stay better informed on these issues, but because she is more concerned with not pissing off Trump, I guess our safety will have to suffer.  Worse than this is Trump complaining about a so-called spy and not seeming to be concerned with the Russian involvement.

Written for Linda G. Hill Life in progress One-Liner Wednesday – May 23 prompt.