In Days of Yore
Current novels are replete with lurid crimes, carnage and death. Do you get
wistful when you recall the romantic tales which begin with an innocent maiden
traveling through the rustic countryside? She is dressed in glittering raiment.
The scene is idyllic. Without warning, the group is set upon by a virile brigand,
who is in the most perfunctory and callous fashion, carries her off. Pandemonium
results! Her entourage, is in the state of bedlam. Her corpulent escort is irate
, but unable to do anything to thwart the debacle. What he can do is to rail
against the catastrophe. What to do? What to do?

to flog a dead horse--to continue to make an issue of something that is over.
He thought he could keep the pot boiling about his opponent's winking at crime,
but he was flogging a dead horse.