[Foxfire4]

His comment about soldiers turning their guns on superiors was meant "in the most metaphoric sense," he explained.

Yeah, it's always a "metaphor" when they get caught calling for someone's death. Anything less and it's just "understandable frustration", as one of my liberal friends told me when I expressed some annoyance at a professor calling a group of women "Republic*nts". "I'm sure he was just frustrated..."

(Also, shouldn't an English professor realize that there aren't degrees of metaphorical speech? Either it's a metaphor or it's not.)

[gogeo]

Yeah, it's always a "metaphor" when they get caught calling for someone's death.

I guess he thought that sounded better than, "I was just kidding."