Sick of the phrase "swift boat"
I don’t want to call it “swift boat” politics, but recently the McCain campaign attacked Obama for what were deemed potentially sexist comments directed towards Sara Palin.
In fact, Obama was giving a speech Tuesday on the campaign trail and used a fairly common phrase to attack McCain’s policies for being similar to those of the Bush administration.
Obama said, “That’s not change, that’s just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
McCain supporters have erroneously tried to portray this comments as a sexist comment towards VP candidate Palin, despite the fact that McCain used the same line last year to describe a Hillary Clinton policy proposal. Palin used a similar line describing her hockey mom self as a pit bull with lipstick on, but again, Obama was citing a slang phrase that even McCain has used to describe “dolled up” politics. Stuff you dress nice to try hide its underbelly.
Follow this link to view CNN’s report.
Watch that video and you will see that the entire audience caught the double meaning in Obama’s “lipstick” comment. They started clapping and giggling before he even completed the phrase.
Maybe he meant that double meaning and was taking a cheap shot at Palin, but maybe he didn’t.
If he DID, he’s a slimy hypocrite. If he didn’t, he SHOULD have realized the double meaning was there before he said it – everyone in the audience did. That said, I’m more inclined to think he had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. Kind of like when he flipped off Hillary during a speech – ala classic Johnny Carson. The entire audience knew what he was doing and started to laugh.
Either way, he’s in a bit of a minor public relations mess of his own making. The McCain Campaign didn’t dream this up. Whether he did it intentionally or not, they rightly called him on it.
If Obama keeps this stuff up he’s going to continue to lose female voters to McCain-Palin. That would prove fatal to the Obama-Biden ticket.