Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Was Obama referring to Palin? "Lipstick on a pig"

Critics say Barack Obama was talking about Sarah Palin. Was he? The audience certainly thought so, and they thought it was pretty funny too.

What’s the difference between a more hopeful kind of politics and old-fashioned attacks? Lipstick.

Barack Obama says the John McCain-Sarah Palin policies don’t represent change, they’re “just calling the same thing something different.”

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said during a town-hall style event here Tuesday night.

The comment was widely interpreted as a play on Republican vice presidential candidate Palin’s joke during the Republican National Convention that the only difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom was lipstick, though the campaign said Obama wasn’t referencing Palin’s comments.

I guess I'm willing at this point to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was just using a well-worn turn of phrase and not calling Palin a pig. It's not the first time he's made a gaffe when the teleprompter was off.

BUT, if Obama didn't realize the comment would be interpreted as a slam at Palin, then he's pretty naive.

Then again...
This isn’t the first time in a 24-hour period that lipstick has become an issue. As he was introducing Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan said Palin had “zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick.”
Plus: Why did he immediately bring up Palin's kids? What was the point of that?
"Look. she's new, she hasn't been on the scene, she's got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody who's looking after five. I've got two, and they tire Michelle and me out," he said.
Someone should have asked a follow-up question: "Senator, what exactly is your point here? Why bring up the kids and being tired?" This comes pretty close to saying the kids are a detriment to her ability to lead because she must be REALLY tired with all of those kids. Didn't he say kids were off limits? Why, then, is he bringing up Palin's kids?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're stretching it.

I agree that many of the examples you cite (the salon stuff especially) are sexist. Or, at the very least, disgusting and mean. (You have to admit that the muslim stuff againstn Obama is racist...)

But, this? Come on. You're way stretching

Anonymous said...

Obama should know any "lipstick" comment automatically brings Palin to everyone's mind. He should have known better.

I once said to a reporter, "One monkey don't stop no show." Not all, but one, of the individuals involved was black so as soon as I made the comment I said, "Oh, no, don't use that, I'm sorry, it was really a poor choice of expressions." (And I didn't go to Harvard.) Fortunately for me, the reporter left it out of her story (I assume she hoped to get quotes from me again). She still misquoted me on other comments and I still got in trouble but at least I wasn't accused (that time) of making a racist comment, which it wasn't but it would have been attacked. I wasn't talking about him, I was talking about them and saying just because 'they' were trying to stop us, we were going to get our job done.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous one: Read my post. I specifically stated that I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and NOT assume that he was calling Palin a pig. Thus, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt that the lipstick comment was a turn of phrase and not sexism. I addressed it on this blog because it's a big topic of the day relating to sexism and Palin.

-Forum moderator

Anonymous said...

Of course Obama knew exactly what he was doing with his Lipstick-On-A-Pig comment. He had plausible deniability and knew he could get away with it. One look at the video and how he played to the audiences reaction is proof enough.

He did the very same thing when he gave Hillary Clinton the finger. The audience reacted and Obama played it for all it was worth, knowing that if anyone called him on it, he could say he was just scratching his nose with his middle finger.