Wolf Howling: pig

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Obama & Lipstick On A Governor II (Updated)

I blogged below on Obama's incredible gaffe of making an analogy that compared Gov. Sarah Palin with a pig. Obama, operating under the theory that a deity can do no wrong, has refused to defuse this situation with an apology. Call it doubling down on hubris and stupidity. The McCain Camp has already released an ad on this one. It is simple but very effective.

As highlighted in Tammy Bruce's essay below, female Hillary supporters in particular are already livid over perceived misogynistic attacks on Hillary by Obama and the media. At the Democratic convention, Bill and Hill went a long way to suturing the gaping wound this had caused. But before the healing could occur, Obama just tore out the sutures and rubbed in some salt. I wonder just how significant the ramifications of this will be? Much more on this at Memorandum, Big Lizards and Hot Air.

Update: The video has been pulled by Youtube at request of CBS. According to Ben Smith: "“One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life," Couric is quoted in the ad. In the original clip, she was talking about Hillary Clinton; the ad applies her words to Sarah Palin." Okay, I have to go with CBS on this one. The McCain camp should have put in enough of the Couric portion to show that she was talking about Hillary. It would have made no difference to the meaning of the ad, and it would have kept out any charge of being misleading. A minor misstep by McCain.

The Obama camp is pointing out that others, including McCain, have use the "lipstick on a pig" expression before as proof that Obama did not misuse the phrase. Sorry, but context is everything when one is trying to determine meaning. And given Palin's well known joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, and given Obama's follow on reference to the stench of "old fish" clearly aimed at McCain, there is no question that by far the most reasonable interpretation is that Obama made a low class slur. Certainly his audience immediately understood it that way. Were I Obama and had I meant otherwise, I would simply apologize to anyone who interpreted it otherwise. That is not what he is doing. Indeed, he is whining about being attacked with the "gender" card. Super. That said, McCain has milked this one for all its worth at this point. Time to move on - unless the One wants to do us the favor of keeping it front and center of the news cycle.

Obama & Lipstick On A Governor

Given all the problems Obama has with female voters after his campaign's perceived treatment of Hillary, comparing Gov. Sarah Palin to a pig is not merely very low class, its also incredibly stupid.

And, lest there be any doubt that he was referring to Palin, his following comment was just as clearly as directed at John McCain - "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ . . . it’s still gonna stink after eight years." Both analogies are more than a bit disrespectful. Instapundit has a big roll-up of comments and links. One would think that Obama is smart enough to realize the impact of his words. Sure, the true believers at the Obama rally ate it up. Let's see how the middle and the PUMA folks react. Perhaps Obama can get some of his money back on that Harvard diploma.