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So I take my eye off Planet Palin for a half a minute—and by the time I get back, Dahlia has sworn off the stuff altogether, and the rest of you are acting like what Barack Obama said about lipstick is no big oink; are you kidding? I am so outraged, I am ONLY going to communicate in down-home phrases re: pigs from now on, in a kind of sarcastic solidarity with my fellow feminist John McCain. That'll show him how the hog eats the cabbage!
Seriously, I take all my cues on sisterhood from John, because who respects women more? That's why Obama'd have hardly anything to work with if he wanted to make an ad in response. Well, except for the footage of McCain laughing and then saying, "Excellent question'' when asked, "How do we beat the bitch?'' OK, and maybe that clip of the minister asking McCain if he really called his wife the c-word. I'm not sure Obama should rely on the 1986 story in the Tucson Citizen quoting McCain telling a joke about rape—even if it was a lot like the one that drove his buddy Claytie Williams out of politics. I guess if Obama really wanted to get down in the mud, he could reference the stripper McCain dated, or the gentlemanly way he behaved with his first—oh, who are we kidding?—with both of his wives. If Hillary's gotten over that—what's the word I want?—deferential joke he made about Chelsea, then who are we to go there? And it would be a total cheap shot to use the footage of him telling biker dudes of America that the mother of four of his children would make a great Miss Buffalo Chip. But John McCain, friend of the female? My friends, that would be a change.
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Just to clarify my post from last night that brought attention to Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment, I was merely pointing out that Obama said something silly and might come to regret it. Which he probably is today, because, as John Dickerson pointed out, he's spending today dealing with it, one more day he's not getting his own message out. I think it's obvious he didn't do it intentionally—if he did, he's not as smart as I've always thought he was—and, to answer your question, Dana, I don't find the phrase even remotely sexist.
He made a gaffe, as all politicians are prone to do, and here's why: Less than a week ago, Sarah Palin stood before the nation and called herself a pit bull in lipstick. It was the signature line in her speech, and it's now part of her identity. So when Obama stood up on that stage and said that McCain and Palin's call for change was "just calling the same thing something different. But you know you can't, you know you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig"—well, the only thing people heard was "lipstick."
So, like Mike Huckabee, I'm going to give Obama a pass on the grounds that it wasn't intentional. At the same time, I don't blame the McCain camp for taking advantage of it, though I do wish they had toned down the outrage just a wee bit.
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I agree with John Dickerson about the silliness of the McCain campaign getting all outraged over Obama's alleged "sexism." Their ticket is of a warrior and frontierswoman. They undercut their own case with their quickie video whining that Sarah Palin is a victim, of all things. But I'd be more willing to buy Obama's surprise as to how his lipstick remark was taken (and it was clear the crowd heard it as a Palin reference) if he hadn't also referred to McCain's ideas as "old fish" wrapped in paper. Surely Obama understands the use and misuse of coded language.
Aside from lipstick, there are two stories on Drudge today that may help explain why Democrats have such a hard time winning the White House. One is about an international poll showing the rest of the world is rooting for Obama to win. The other is about an international poll showing much of the rest of this same world believes either the United States or Israel were the perpetrators of the attacks of Sept.11. It is understandable that many Americans don't care that much about the good opinion of a world that thinks we attacked ourselves, and they worry how a "citizen of the world" would respond if we were attacked again.
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