Till the scandal blew over?

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “blew over” in particular: After the leaked images appeared in newspapers, Kirk was advised by his manager to stay at home till the scandal blew over.

My comments:

Kirk who?

I’m being nosy, I see.

Anyways, someone named Kirk found himself in trouble after some dirty pictures of him appeared in newspapers, which threatens to bring his heretofore good reputation to ruin.

Hence, his advisor asked him to lie low (stay at home) till the scandal blew over.

Kirk should not do anything to draw further attention to himself until the scandal passes, hopefully leaving Kirk and everybody involved relatively unscathed.

Here, the scandal is likened to a storm with heavy rain and wind.

People hide indoors to, as they say, weather out the storm. They avoid any activities outdoors lest they get hurt. They wait the storm out – they wait and wait, till the rain stops, till the wind loses its force, till, eventually, the sky clears and the sun starts beaming again.

As sure as any storm will pass, Kirk’s manager believes the pictures scandal will pass without doing Kirk any real harm. After all, people move onto other things – such as new scandals involving more prominent people – and will soon forget all about Kirk’s troubles.

So, keep a low profile, Kirk, till the scandal, like a storm, blew over.

Over, as in Game Over. Finished. Done and dealt with.

All right, here are a few media examples of people hoping that something scandalous, controversial or at any rate unpleasant will blow over:

1. When Fox News hired Laura Ingraham last September to join its prime-time lineup, executives knew she was a potential management headache. As a guest host in the past, Ingraham was well known for being volatile with producers. Her on-set blowups were so legendary that staffers in the newsroom would sometimes turn on the monitors and watch the unfolding drama on mute for fun. Efforts by management to rein her in were largely unsuccessful. “No one tells Laura what to do,” one Fox executive told me.

Last week, Ingraham’s volatility became not just a newsroom issue, but something of a crisis for the network. Ingraham’s tweet ridiculing Parkland survivor-turned-gun-control-advocate David Hogg about his college admissions ignited an uproar. Hogg responded by calling on advertisers to boycott Ingraham’s show. By Friday, about a dozen companies had yanked commercials despite Ingraham issuing an apology, a step she took on her own.

Inside Fox, senior executives were exasperated, sources said. “You don’t attack a kid,” one told me. “It was an unforced error.” Not surprisingly, the network’s advertising department was in an uproar. “People are pulling their hair out,” one insider told me. But there was debate about how to respond. It wasn’t the first time Ingraham’s rhetoric had caused problems. In February, Ingraham told LeBron James that he should “shut up and dribble” after James was quoted by ESPN criticizing Donald Trump. Ingraham’s comments about James made executives apoplectic, sources said. They hoped that the Hogg controversy, while annoying, wasn’t at the same level. If they stayed quiet it might blow over. Ingraham is off the air this week on a vacation the network insists was pre-planned. But her absence has failed to stanch the advertiser exodus. As of yesterday, 16 brands had publicly bailed; an insider said the number is higher. And in the media, speculation ramped up that Ingraham might not return to Fox.

- “You Don’t Attack a Kid”: Inside the Laura Ingraham Nightmare at Fox News, VanityFair.com, April 5, 2018.

2. As mounting campus protests and arrests over the Israel-Hamas war threatened his fragile electoral coalition, advisors to President Joe Biden assured him Friday that this would blow over once all Gazans were dead.

“Just lie low, let a few thousand more bombs drop on densely populated areas, and you’re golden, Mr. President,” said senior communications advisor Anita Dunn, promising the depleted Biden that in a matter of months, there would hopefully be no one left to protest for in the besieged Palestinian territory.

“I know things might seem bleak now, sir, but all you need to do is hold the course giving Israel billions in military aid, and this will most likely all be a distant memory by November. After that, it’s smooth sailing ahead. What are the activists going to be angry about then? A bunch of rubble and mass graves?” Dunn went on to stress that with any luck, there soon wouldn’t be any student protesters left alive, either.

- Satire: Advisors Assure Biden This Will Blow Over Once All Gazans Dead, TheOnion.com, May 3, 2024.

3. In April 1932, Adolf Hitler lost the election to the presidency of the German Reich by more than 5 million votes. Nonetheless, Hitler claimed victory, boasting not only that he had won but that his win was unprecedented. Many believed him. He appealed to the courts, but they ruled against him.

For years, since he had become the leader of a small right-wing political party, Hitler had been working to dismantle the German political system and do away with the multiparty democracy that prevailed. He was a master of vague, rambling, aggressive rhetoric, spouting one outrageous lie after the other at such frequency that all rational thinking dissolved under the barrage of emotional appeal. He said that the country was ruined, that people were miserable, that inflation was eating away at their income and savings, that crime was rampant, and that non-Germans were “poisoning the blood” of true citizens. The only hope, he proclaimed, lay in him and his party, the National Socialist Party, known, in short – according to the German pronunciation of “Natzional” – as the Nazis.

His success was astonishing. In just a few years, he had managed to grow the membership of his party from a handful to more than 1.5 million and the number of voters who supported him to 14 million. His bombastic and mendacious demagoguery appealed to a large number of citizens who appreciated simple, straightforward answers to complicated questions, had always secretly looked down on historically maligned minorities and believed in the idea of a single charismatic figure who would solve all their problems.

Hitler went on constantly about the superiority of the German people and his ability to restore the prestige of the homeland. (“Make Germany great again” was one of his slogans.) He also unceasingly attacked groups of people who had been ensconced in German society for years as “vermin.”

His rhetorical tactics were few in number but powerful: appeal to emotion; repeat a few simple statements constantly; keep attacking your political opponents; and, finally, find enemies to pick on and vilify them endlessly.

...

Politicians who had either opposed or denounced him climbed onto the bandwagon. Some of them genuinely believed that a system with a strong leader who rewards a small elite and keeps everybody else in line was the best way to run a country. Perfectly decent, ordinary citizens who were fed up with the status quo thought that he really could make their lives better. Many others were afraid of speaking their minds and just tried to ignore the growing threat or persuaded themselves that the whole affair would blow over.

By the end of 1932, the Nazis had the largest number of seats in the parliament, and in January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Immediately after he came into power, the entire democratic system began to collapse.

- A warning from history, BerkshireEagle.com, August 2, 2024.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）