When celebrities say stupid things in public or get nabbed for shoplifting, their agents shift into overdrive. The same thing happens to countries that get nailed in public for their horrendous human rights abuses.

Young people who want to receive phone calls but don’t want their teachers or parents to catch on can download high-frequency “mosquito” ringtones. After a certain age, the older set loses its ability to hear these higher frequency tones. In this way, older people literally become tone deaf to the way younger people communicate. Talk about resonant metaphors.

Our new king’s armor is starting to get tarnished.

For the last decade, highway fatalities in the United States remained relatively constant, at 42,000 deaths a year. Every year, in other words, we lose more people on American roads than we did in the three-year-long Korean War.

Obama’s product — America — has taken a beating in the marketplace over the last eight years or so. The president has to do some serious rebranding.

Taliban might be crazy, but they don’t have nukes and we don’t expect them to bomb Waikiki any time soon.

Wars usually end with talking. With the blood still fresh on the battlefield, politicians sit down at a negotiating table for peace talks. Words, after all, are their currency.