The Politics of Pigs in Lipstick

Much media attention has been given today to Barack Obama's recent poor choice of words. Too bad he didn't read his fortune cookie yesterday: "Put lipstick on pig, put foot in mouth." Seems that the McCain camp is having a bit of fun and probable folly in responding to this gaffe by posting a strategically edited and misleading "attack" ad which suggests that the Democratic Presidential Candidate was referring to Republican darling Sarah Palin when he said, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Now, seriously, I believe - and Obama has made clear - that he was absolutely NOT referring to Governor Palin...that he was merely using a common expression in his criticism of McCain's economic policies. (One has only to google the phrase to see that it's been around a long time. ) For this reason, and most likely this is one of the few times you'll hear me say this, I have to side with the Obama camp on this one. I do think, however, that Senator Obama should have seen this coming. I mean, how many hundreds of times in the past week have we heard Saracuda's quote from her VP candidate acceptance speech - you know the one about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull being lipstick? You'd think Barack would have thought twice before even using the "L" word. If he had, he might have realized he was risking the wrath of the Maverick, the Barracuda and millions of their supporters who jumped to silly conclusions as soon as the headlines hit.

Now, I'm pretty sure that McCain and Palin themselves knew darn well that their political nemesis wasn't making reference to the Governor and that their campaign managers saw this as an opportunity to widen the lead that they are currently enjoying. At any rate, I do agree with Barack Obama saying "Enough!" in response to this madness. Senator Obama was also correct in labeling this a "phony controversy". The American people deserve to hear straight forward talk about the critical issues that our country is facing. The candidates need to devote their time to clearly communicating their proposed solutions to REAL problems and not waste time on diversionary fiction.

To be honest, I'm baffled and embarassed that the McCain campaign allowed this to happen. I thought we were bigger and better than this. I guess they, too, should have read their fortune cookie which said "He who hears comment about makeup best not make up lies". Consequently, my next writing project of the day will be directed to my Presidential hopeful...for what it's worth - coming from me, that is - I will share with him not only my disappointment, but also my hope that he will take this piece of fiction off of his website and issue an apology for allowing it to get there in the first place.