smoke and mirrors the obscuring or embellishing of the truth of a situation with misleading or irrelevant information : the budget process is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. [ORIGIN: with reference to illusion created by magic tricks.]
Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantialexplanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians' illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrorsamid a distracting burst of smoke. The expression may have a connotation of virtuosity or cleverness in carrying out such a deception.
In the field of computer programming, it is used to describe a program or functionality that does not yet exist, but appears as though it does. This is often done to demonstrate what a resulting project will function/look like after the code iscomplete — at a trade show, for example.
More generally, "smoke and mirrors" may refer to any sort of presentation by which the audience is intended to be deceived, such as an attempt to fool a prospective client into thinking that one has capabilities necessary to deliver a product in question.
Compare red herring.
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Dear Reader,
This week's offering is an examination of smoke and mirrors; it is not an attempt to use them to deceive you. If anything, it is hoped that a few of the items below might blow a bit of smoke away and replace one or more of the officially-sanctioned, carnival mirrors with ones made of tempered, plate glass.
The Management
1. Smoke
2. Mirror
3. A Little of Each?
4. Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the wisest wizard of all?
5. A reflection On His Intelligence
6. Smoked Pork (the political variety)
7. With Smoke, Mirrors, and the Koch Brothers' Cash...
Go to the GOP Police State! Go directly to the GOP Police State! Do not pass Go, do not collect a living wage!
8. The New GOP: Turning Political Pipe Dreams into Reality
9. Despite the scientific inaccuracy and the somewhat-sticky subject, discos here!
Male honeybees are called drones. They do not hunt for flowers and collect pollen. Therefore they do not dance. Their sole raison d'être is to mate with the queen...well one of them does...once. All the pollen-collecting, honey-making worker bees in the hive are infertile females.
So the bee talking in the cartoon is blowing smoke, which, along with the spinning, mirrored, disco ball gives me two excuses for including it in this week's compilation.
10. Where there's smoke; there's fire, except in the minds of science deniers.
11. Holy Smoke!
Hey! For centuries it's worked to keep the masses in line and the elite in power. Why mess with such a successful system?
12. Smokey Bear would NOT approve!
Yeah, I know. That title is a pretty lame excuse for including this one in a smoke and mirrors collection, but it allows me to fill out the requisite dozen items.
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