Lipstick On Pigs, Politicial Rhetoric, And Overreactions
By Doug Mataconis | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, PalinThe latest controversy in the 2008 Presidential Campaign erupted overnight in reaction to a comment that Barack Obama made yesterday at a rally in Lebanon, Virginia:
Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:
Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.
“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”
“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”
“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”
The crowd apparently took the “lipstick” line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: “lipstick.”
Here’s the video:
So, did Barack Obama mean his remark to be an oblique insult of Sarah Palin ? That’s what the McCain campaign wants us to believe:
“Senator Obama uttered what I can only describe to be disgusting comments, comparing our vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, to a pig,” former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift declared in a conference call with reporters.
(…)
Swift, the newly designated chair of the “Palin Truth Squad,” demanded that Obama apologize. She said Obama must have been talking about Palin because she is the only one of the four candidates who wears lipstick, and she called the remark an obvious reference to Palin’s joke in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last week that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick.
To which the Obama campaign responded:
Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy – the same analogy that Senator McCain himself used about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.
And, indeed, Obama has used what is in fact a commonly used idiom before in discussing the Bush Administration policy in Iraq, and John McCain used it last year when he talked about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.
Not everyone on the right is picking up on the McCain Campaign’s joke-as-insult meme, though.
For example, Roger Kimball at Pajama’s Media says that the campaign is guilty of the same whining that Republicans often accuse Democrats of exhibiting:
I think it is bad form for Republicans to play this silly game. I do not know Sarah Palin. But from what I know of her, I would guess that if she even noticed Obama’s desperate little performance her first, and probably her last, reaction was to laugh. Certainly (I feel sure) she would countenance no whining. Because some jerk as much as called you a pig? Get a life. Still, I would advise Obama not to reprise it when she or her husband was actually in the room. Some loud mouth Harvard-educated twit bloviating to a bunch of losers on TV somewhere is one thing; actually insulting someone to her face is something else entirely. I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing Obama understands, but I bet he would be a quick learner.
In any event, I do hope that Republicans will pass over Obama’s crude remark with the silence it deserves. I don’t say forget about it. On the contrary. But I would hate to see Republicans descend to play the hurt feelings, you’re-so-insensitive game.
Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy agrees:
The proper Republican response for a joke that misfires would be to make fun of Obama’s gaffe, but not to demand an apology. Palin is tough. An off-color joke may not be that big a deal – and even if it is, she should be tough enough to brush it off. The Republican narrative should be that Obama is losing his cool and that he is acting like a VP candidate by going after the other VP candidate — ie, they should be suggesting that Obama can’t take the heat.
An excellent point, considering that yesterday’s remarks appear to be yet another example of the hypothesis that Obama is making a mistaken by focusing so much on Sarah Palin.
But, we’re still left with the question of whether Obama was really referring to Sarah Palin when he made the remark.
On that note, even former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee seems to think that the McCain campaign is over-reacting on this one:
SEAN HANNITY: I want you — to get your reaction. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
MIKE HUCKABEE: It’s an old expression, and I’m going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin; he didn’t reference her. If you take the two soundbites together, it may sound like it. But I’ve been a guy at the podium many times, and you say something that’s maybe a part of an old joke and then somebody ties it in. So, I’m going to have to cut him slack.
I never thought I’d say this, but Mike Huckabee is right. The McCain Campaign, along with it’s supporters in the blogosphere is overreacting to what was, at the most, an off-the-cuff and perhaps badly timed joke. If anything, what happened yesterday is yet another indication of the fact that Barack Obama is not a very good extemporaneous speaker — if he doesn’t have a teleprompter in front of him he tends to wander off on tangents and get himself in trouble. I don’t think he was calling Sarah Palin a pig, and even if he was, the McCain campaign is making a mistake by trying to turn this into the story of the week.
Oh, and one other thing, I agree with T-Steel at The Moderate Voice; this campaign has official jumped the shark.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, Palin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Much ado about nothing. I’ll agree that Biden’s comments yesterday about stem cell research were idiotic, but this one? Nah.
I don’t think Obama is paying enough attention to Palin’s rhetoric (nor should he) to get in a dig like that.
Just ambush politics as usual. Nothing to see here.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:42 am
For a former POW, McCain sure is sensitive. Every report I’ve heard on this faux outrage of the day seems to be either mocking him for overreaching, or suggesting how hypocritical he is for using the phrase himself vs. Hillary and then playing the gender card.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Of course Huckabee would say this. He has repeatedly expressed his disdain for the libertarian wing of the GOP. Nobody in the Republican Party has been more outfront anti-libertarian than the former Governor of Arkansas.
Sarah Palin is the Nation’s most prominent libertarian Republican. If she wins the VP slot that means a huge victory for the libertarian wing over the populist big government conservatives like the Huckster.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:10 am
This isn’t remotely close. If you read the context of the speech, Obama is clearly talking about McCain’s policies being the same as Bush’s. There’s no reference to Palin at all. Hell, there’s not even a personal reference to McCain. It’s all about the policies.
This is faux outrage and a clumsy attempt to play the gender card.
But since we’re on the topic, the pig metaphor is apt in more ways than one, however. The McCain campaign has taken to wallowing in the mud. Whatever John McCain may once have been, he’s forfeited any claim to being an honorable man with the way he has run his campaign. It’s pure sleaze.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Eric,
I don’t quite get how giving Sarah Palin a job with no real power is a “huge victory” for libertarian Republicans, but your comment doesn’t really address the post.
Obama clearly wasn’t attacking Palin personally and the McCain campaign looks petty the longer insists that he was.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:22 am
You know, after watching the bloviators on the morning shows, I think that this issue is pretty much a wash.
For every person who is righteously indignant about this perceived slight, there are just as many who are incredulous that the McCain campaign would stoop to this level of idiocy.
Add to that, the fact that tomorrow is Sept. 11th, and McCain and Obama are supposed to be in NY together.
By Friday, nobody will even remember anything about pigs or lipstick.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:19 am
McCain’s campaign really stepped in it with this one.
Now every talking head is focusing on Obama’s ridiculing McCain’s attempt to co-opt the change message after supporting Bush for 8 years. You can’t buy advertising like that.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:46 am
@Ed – Exactly. Obama’s comment was certainly calculated to draw attention back to the Obama campaign, and at the same time allowed the “lipstick is really on a pig (not so much a bulldog)” imagery lingering the in the air. Obama has cover, becuase McCain used the same imagery to attack Clinton. Looks like McCain took the bait. We’ll see who ends up with a net gain, but I don’t think Obama, Inc., wants to win this one, they just wanted to get McCain to respond, thereby grabbing back the spotlight. Make no mistake – these “gaffes” are calculated.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Oh yeah – and the reason those Republicans think that McCain is over-reacting is becuase they know the game, and they see the trap.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Obama’s response today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zAbeu3v3Wc
September 10th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Eric Dondero: “Sarah Palin is the Nation’s most prominent libertarian Republican.”
Are you kidding me??
More prominent and more libertarian than Ron Paul??
If you believe that, I have some nice oceanfront property in Nebraska I could see you…
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
http://www.independentvoting.org
September 10th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I wanted to point out that Palin looks just like Peggy Hill, just an observation
Peggy 1
Palin 1
Peggy 2
Palin 2
September 10th, 2008 at 10:46 am
McCain has proposed to bankrupt the country even faster than Bush with bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% and more tax breaks for fossil fuel industries. Think any of that will trickle down to the rest of us? He’ll give you a tax “credit” less than half what it takes to go out and buy health insurance for your family but you’re on your own after that. He thinks we can throw the Russians out of the G8 when in fact the Russians would have to vote themselves out. Even the Bush Administration thinks that’s nutty. Everyone from the Iraqi government to the Bush Administration has adopted Obama’s timetable for getting out of Iraq but McCain still wants to stay for four, a hundred or a thousand years, or whatever it is this week.
Pigs will fly before any of that works.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:09 am
The “old fish” line gave it away that it was preplanned… but McCai overreacted…
Race Man: How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304
September 10th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I’m glad that after the Obama and Clinton campaigns over-reacted to every perceived slight in the primaries, McCain is now jumping on board and doing the same in the general election. If it was a shot at Palin, it was an oblique one. The phrase is a very common idiom. The whining is annoying.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
/agree on this one. And the fact that they had a commercial ready in what, 9 hours, seems to indicate that the McCain camp has lost its focus a bit. Both campaigns have effectively cancelled out the experience vs. fresh blood arguments–time to talk about the issues.
September 10th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Ridiculous. As an Arizonan for 20 years, I have never seen McCain run any campaign with the kind of press-ducking, issue-skirting, mock outrage he has exhibited in this general election. Before McCain’s hard loss to Bush in the 2000 primaries, McCain would have been the first to laugh off this semantic non-issue. “Jumped the shark” is the perfect phrase for the campaign, even though I have had quite enough of the animal references (see pitbulls, pigs, barracudas, sharks, moose, polar bears, etc.)