‘Lipstick on a pig’

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: September 10, 2008

All the political buzz over the past 18 hours has been about something Barack Obama said on the stump yesterday.

Take a look at the quote—in context—and see what you think.

(Register your opinion about this: Vote on the new poll question in the sidebar.)

Of course, you remember GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin’s ad lib in her acceptance speech last week: “You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.“

That line took on a life of its own. That speech was seen by 40 million people , about the same number of—or maybe even more than—those who saw Obama deliver his acceptance speech in Denver the week before. In addition, the media latched on to that line arguably more than any other from the entire speech. They treated it like a microcosm of Palin’s meteoric emergence on the national stage.

So it’s no surprise that people connected Obama’s statement to the last politician who discussed lipstick.

John McCain’s campaign pounced, calling the comment “offensive and disgraceful” and demanding an apology for the “sexist” remark. Conservatives were repulsed, and liberals were left to explain away that the comment was “just an old saying” and that any connection between it and Palin was coincidental.

Obama himself jumped back into the fray, taking about five minutes before the start of his campaign event on education in Virginia this morning to address the firestorm that had erupted. He took on an attitude of surprise about the controversy. He scolded the media for making the “lipstick on a pig” statement the top story of the day. John McCain’s campaign wants to talk about things like this, not issues, Obama said, and by putting the comment front and center for two days, the media is doing just what the McCain campaign wants.

SIDEBAR: Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that even Democrats were saying that the media was totally in the tank for Obama? Wasn’t it just a couple of weeks ago that they were marveling over the Democratic convention in general and Obama’s speech in particular? Wasn’t it just a few days ago that the media (Jeffrey Toobin, Carl Bernstein, Chris Matthews and our all-time favorite, Keith Olbermann) were charging that Republicans were starting another culture war? Yes, yes and yes. So apparently, some of the “change” Barack Obama is bringing to this presidential election cycle includes his unique perspective on media bias. END SIDEBAR

“Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change,“ Obama said at the start of an education event in Virginia. “We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.

“I don’t care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics,“ he also said. “Enough is enough.“

Well, he’s right about the “real problems” this country faces. And he’s right when he says, “This is what we do every four years,“ referring to manufactured controversies that obscure true debate on issues.

But here’s the problem with Obama’s righteous indignation: If this is a manufactured controversy, Obama manufactured it.

He alone is responsible for it.

This is a man who is known for his soaring rhetoric. This is a man whose mastery of the English language and his ability to turn a phrase is unrivaled in modern political history (with the possible exception of Ted Sorenson, who wrote speeches for President John F. Kennedy).

This is not a man who makes mistakes with words.

If Obama wanted a trite saying about how you can dress something up but you are still dealing with the same thing, there are plenty of other ways to say it. Good Southerners, for example, remember this exchange in Gone with the Wind:

Rhett: Don’t you think it would be nice if you bought something for Mammy too?

Scarlett: Why should I buy her a present when she called us both mules?

Rhett: Mules? Why mules?

Scarlett: Yes. She said we could give ourselves airs and get ourselves all rigged up and we were like race horses and we were just mules in horse harness and we didn’t fool anybody.

In any event, Obama says he really wasn’t thinking of Sarah Palin with his “lipstick on a pig” remark.

The bottom line is that if that’s true, then he’s the only one.

Watch that crowd behind him when he delivers the line. They knew exactly what—and whom—he was talking about.

Obama’s explanation of his “innocent remark” requires what another lipsticked candidate once called “the willing suspension of disbelief.“

This sort of thing—Obama’s “lipstick” comment—is exactly what Kirsten Powers was saying yesterday. Obama still hasn’t figured out how to deal with Palin, and now he’s cost himself two more days in the media cycle ...

... And likely some undecided voters in swing states, too.

With all that said, the McCain campaign isn’t doing itself any favors by latching on to this like a—ahem—pit bull on to a bone. By engaging Obama on this, they are wasting an opportunity. They simply should have released a statement saying how disappointed they were that Obama was sinking to this level of politics—it would have been a good opportunity for them to hit him on his promise to “change the tone in Washington”—and maybe throwing in a line to the effect of, “If he wants to say something about our candidates, he should at least have the courage to say it outright.“

And then McCain could have left the attacking, the outrage and all the combative discourse to the conservative punditry and blogosphere (trust me, they can handle it) while taking on Obama’s “discourse changer” mantle.

The winner on Nov. 4 will likely be the candidate(s) who make the fewest mistakes between now and Election Day.

The Obama campaign hasn’t had a great week.