After Joe Tsai bought the Brooklyn Nets, his focus was on unseating the Knicks as New York’s favorite team. Instead, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba quickly found himself embroiled in the NBA’s showdown with China.
Third rail of politics
The third rail of a nation's politics is a metaphor for any issue so controversial that it is "charged" and "untouchable" to the extent that any politician or public official who dares to broach the subject will invariably suffer politically. The metaphor comes from the high-voltage third rail in some electric railway systems.
Touching a third rail can result in electrocution, so usage of the metaphor in political situations relates to the risk of "political suicide" that a person would face by associating with a certain cause, topic, or subject having a highly controversial or offensive nature.
It is most commonly used in North America. Though commonly attributed to Tip O'Neill,[1] Speaker of the United States House of Representatives during the Reagan presidency, it seems to have been coined by O'Neill aide Kirk O'Donnell in 1982 in reference to Social Security.[2]
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