September 09, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama
Obama: 'Lipstick on a pig'
Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:
Quote:Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.
"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."
"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."
"We've had enough of the same old thing."
The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."
Since Palin owns the word 'lipstick" this season due to the punchline to her oft-repeated hockey mom joke, will the ever-sensitive Dems recognize the three glaring references to:
1) Sarah Palin is the pig in lipstick
2)"Old" is a dig at McCain
3) Fish" is a derogatory slang for women (ask Andrew Sullivan)
If Obama meant to imply all of that, he is unfit to be President.
If Obama did not mean to imply any of that, he is an idiot for not knowing which words are "code" words.
BTW, If McCain had characterized Obama's secretiveness regarding Ayers and Wright as "Trying to get the fried chicken recipe from Colonel Sanders", or described Obama's Marxist environmental programs as "Like watermelons...Green on the outside, Red on the inside", would that be simply using a "turn of the phrase" and would McCain not be attacked by libs?
This is a major gaffe from Obama.
UPDATE: Video added. As you can see, the crowd of post-racial light worker fans knew exactly who and what he meant. Apparently Joe Biden was introduced at a different event by Congressman Carnahan with a different take on the lipstick theme.
Hat Tip: Drudge Report
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60 comments:
What an ass$*%&. I suggest ALL WOMEN SEND OBAMA OUR LIPSTICK!!!!
Send him a message that we are voting for Palin. What a sexist PIG!!! I recall the middle finger itch by him regarding Hillary, too.
Well Obama as you say - “WORDS DO MATTER.!”
You are going to LOSE BIG TIME AMONG WOMEN.
Megan
Hillary supporter voting for Palin
The crowd knew Obama meant Palin. Not a lot of class, even fewer brains.
This is a common expression. It is not gendered. It was not aimed at Palin. AND-it is oneMcCain himself used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" last year to refer to one of Hillary Clinton's health care proposal. If it is inappropriate for a male politician to use the phrase against a female politician, MCCAIN DID IT LAST YEAR!
In no way did Obama call Palin a pig-I, however, am calling Jane Swift a deceitful jackass.
Moreover, McCain and his campaign has zero standing to take offense, given McCain's lengthy and sordid history of offensive if not cruel jokes, ranging from his ape rape joke to his vicious joke about Chelsea Clinton (which at the time was described by the Washington Post as "too vicious to print" and other papers also didn't run the actual joke).
So-let's sum up. First, Obama didn't call Palin a pig. Second, the outrage is coming from the campaign of a person who has a history of given even worse remarks. I guess lies and hypocrisy go hand in hand on the McCain Campaign.
Hey Tom,
Long time! How's the giggin' goin'?
Maybe I “blog” in the wrong circles, but I’ve never seen or heard a candidate for ANY office use locker room references to women (i.e., “fish”, etc.) in a public arena.
Obama is beyond sexist —- he is a dispicable profile of dishonor and disrespect.
The relative obscurity of the "fish in a newspaper" turn of phrase suggests that Obama searched for references that would be cut or in his view germane to his view of the race.
I think if Palin or McCain had used the old "lets call a spade a spade" (not racist, see: http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/miftocllspdspd.shtml) it would, in THIS RACE in THIS TIME be perceived as either intentional or insensitive.
Likewise had McCain or Palin uttered that "we haven't seen rhetoric like this in a coon's age." (That's a reference to how long racoons -- sometimes crows are substituted live -- and refers to "its been a while").
In this place and this time, those terms are loaded with racial connotations of which someone on the public stage should be aware. Likewise "lipstick" (in this season, after last week's speech it raises clear referral connotations), or less so, the "smelly fish" reference which).
I don't know his intent, but it was a gaffe that, if uttered by any Republican about a democrat that had just made the lipstick/hockey moms joke, would roil into a full media meltdown.
dartmouth05: "This is a common expression. It is not gendered. It was not aimed at Palin."
One elitist making excuses for another. There is simply nobody following this campaign who wouldn't immediately make the connection between Palin and "lipstick" and McCain and "old."
Pathetic!
Frankly I think this is a bit of a reach, and I LOVE Sarah Palin. It just begins to sound like a bit of desperation to pick any nit.
Stay with the substantive issues; there are plenty. This one doesn't have legs, in my opinion.
Not only that, he continued:
"You know Sarah Palin is an interesting story.” The crowd booed. “No, she’s new!” Obama said. “She hasn’t been on the scene, you know, 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!”
In other words, that's Palin's major accomplishment, having kids. He's dismissing her as "just a Mom". Not a Governor. Not as chair of an Alaskan Energy board. Not as a reformer, or even a small-town lawyer. Just give her props for popping out the kids.
You know, I heard Hillary's people whining about it. Now I'm beginning to believe that the guy has a real problem with women. First Hillary, then Palin dissed him, and he responds with flipping Hillary off and calling Palin a pig and dismissing her as just being a Mom. Anyone ever say "yeah, that Robert Kennedy, he's something new! 10 kids! Wow, I have a lot of respect for him!"
Hogwash.
This is such a non-issue that the new media should be embarrassed about resembling the old.
Are you related to Olbermann?
Darthmouth05--
There is NO possibility that Obama didn't KNOW he was using Palin's word and implying her in his joke....
Lipstick on a pig is a metaphor, not a joke. Obama milked this for all it was worth, stretching the pause between lines for several seconds while the crowd laughed, and he would NOT have done that if he didn't know they were going to laugh. He knew they would, because he knew they'd take it as a jab at Palin.
I was doubting this at first, but after seeing the video: Yes, it was intentional.
And coupled with the distortion by which he defined the woman not by her experiences, but by the number of her kids (casually insinuating the 'can she be VP with kids to take care of" sexism), I am positive it was calculated beforehand as part of a strategy he and his advisers are rolling out here.
What a prick.
You know, I have caught myself starting to write "let's call a spade a spade" in blog posts and stopped myself and looked for less inflamatorry expression, given the circumstances of the race. These phrases candidates use come from long discussions among strategists. Or else Obama is an idiot.
Have you forgotten that one of the most prominent photographs of Palin in the past week is the one of her holding the fish?
I don't think he really meant to use those phrases, that's just too much to believe. Maybe I'm still a provincial Wisconsin hick.
He did use them, however, and that's the problem. You can't tout 19 months of campaigning as "executive experience" and then let drop a rookie statement like that.
I'm guessing we'll hear he was "tired", or an anonymous staffer fed him those lines. He has yet to apologize - and personally take the blame - for anything thus far.
The MSM will not call Obama out on this or any of his other gaffes.
"Dartmouth05" is just another of David Axelrod's Astroturfers. I just read the exact same quote, word for word, on another blog's comments, that one signed by "AKADAD". The Democrat efforts are laughable in their way of marching like automatons (they make me think of the crowd in the famous Apple ad). Nothing original, nothing useful, and deny deny deny when their annointed one blows it.
Webrider
I thought Obama was a wise and enlightened orator. If so...WTF?
Democrats have code words? I thought it was just evil Republicans that talked in code?
This man is a disaster without his flash cards...
If he didn't mean it he is an idiot. Sarah Palin is the only one I know running for office that wears lipstick.
Did you hear Obama's last dig?
He called our dear Sarah a pig
With a few more of those
By the time the polls close
It is she who'll be dancing a jig.
- Brother John
are you people serious? so i guess when mccain used that phrase against clinton he was calling her a pig as well. and i guess when obama used it regarding war plans in iraq he meant that general petraeus is a pig.
i guess mccain was referring to obama as a sexual deviant in his ad today. obama should retort that sexual education would have done some good for the palin family. now that would be a "mean" response.
GET OVER IT!
Forgot about him flipping off hillary.
What a class act.
heyrankinboy@yahoo.com
I think this is more sloppiness than artifice. Had he (that is, his speechwriter) been so clever as to get in a veiled dig or two (pig, fish), s/he also would have been clever enough to parse how the message would have backfired. Well-written political text (yes, I have done this work) is bulletproof: It doesn't backfire. Because if you're writing text that your candidate has to defend, you're better off NOT having written ANYthing. Just have the candidate smile and kiss babies instead.
What's happening here is pretty clear to me: Obama's inexperienced campaign is working OT to put out message that will dampen the Palin conflagration. It's damage control hastily mixed with a desire to get McCain and Palin on the defensive. And like all things hasty, it's flawed.
The thing is, when you're a politician, everything you say will be analyzed to death. When you're running for president of the US, multiply by ten. You don't write political material the way you'd dash off, say, a blog post or a Twitter note. That's a recipe for disaster, yet that's EXACTLY what Obama and his handlers just did.
Pig= Palin, Old fish= McCain. This was no accident, but it was mind-numbingly stupid and classless. Obama is less ready to be president than I am, and I'm just a stupid guitarist.
Nothing Obama says these days is unintentional...very passive aggressive...verbal cowardice...toss it out there, then a wide-eyed "Who, me?" Didn't we all see this on the playground, say about fifth grade?
The meta-message is that Palin has gotten ∅bama rattled. Instead of sending out the message that ∅bama has this policy message, this goal for the US, ∅bama is attacking his opponent. One of the first rules of selling is: emphasize the good points of your product, not the bad points of your competitor.The more ∅bama keeps attacking like this, the more he will continue to lose ground.
Does a senior star athlete spend much time talking about the second stringer on the freshman team? No. Such a worm is beneath contempt. To the degree that ∅bama keeps talking about Palin as if she is a second stringer on the freshman team, the more he will elevate her.Why is the star senior athlete so worried about the second stringer on the freshman team?
Obama lacks class - even for a Chicago politician.
Using any thing McCain himself said is not sexist
and using anything Obama said himself is not racist.
you all are morons.
XLiberal, Obama is not attacking his opponent here - so what does that say that the top of one ticket is attacking the bottom of the other? Perhaps Obama thinks he's finally found his paygrade?
And anyone who wants to believe that this leg tingling speaker, who at least once a week delivers the Most Historic Speech Since the Gettysburg Address (tm) made a casual faux pas here? You can't have it both ways... I know, he was tired and wanted to finish his waffle, so it doesn't count. This was deliberate, but the best thing for the Republicans to do is issue a short statement decrying the personal attack and let it go. They want to look like the mature parties in this one.
so words used offend you but not the message?
LoL
I will let words of GOP legislators, from CO Springs, speak "a woman who has sex before marriage is a slut."
who could he and she be talking about?
Steve Skubinna said...
XLiberal, Obama is not attacking his opponent here - so what does that say that the top of one ticket is attacking the bottom of the other? Perhaps Obama thinks he's finally found his paygrade?
Good way of putting it!
It's actually great rhetoric. Lipstick = Palin, Pig = McCain. He's not calling Palin the pig, she's the lipstick on the pig (McCain). Old Fish = McCain. Piece of Paper Called Change = Palin. She's the piece of paper (lightweight, thin) he's the old fish.
Blogger Tom Spaulding said...
So...McCain said it about Clinton, eh? I wonder if Hillary has perhaps offered her "help" to the Obama/Biden campaign in the guise of giving their tired stump speeches the "woman's perspective". I also wonder if she said: "We gotta difuse that 'pitbull' line. Let's play it against her by repeating the old bromide about 'lipstick and pigs'...like McCain did with me".
I further wonder if she actually knew it would backfire and end up helping McCain, thereby getting her closer to a 2012 showdown between two women for the Presidency.
I mean, she IS a Clinton.
Palin clearly owns the term "lipstick" in this campaign having famously delighted the country with it in a joke less than two weeks ago. She's also, one hopes, the only one running who actually wears lipstick.
The audience's reaction indicated they immediately thought of Palin when Barry used the word. Why didn't this supposedly brilliant orator stop right there when he realized his audience was misinterpreting him? He didn't stop because they didn't misinterpret him. He meant to compare Palin to a pig. It was intentional.
Only Barry's diehard defenders could fail to see it. Should I believe them, or my lying eyes?
Pot...kettle...black.
I live in Virgina. You should have seen the month-long crusade from the WaPo around here when George Allen said, "macaca".
Trent Lott lost his the Speakership when he told a poor joke straining to be funny at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday.
If any Republican had a female Democratic opponent who staked out the word, "lipstick", then he used it make comparisons with a pig followed by old fish analogies in order to disparage the opposition, he'd be run out here on a rail. Guaranteed.
To all you guys saying, "There's nothing folks move along!"
Suuuuurrre!
My God. Just imagine what a President Obama would be saying to world leaders in unscripted situations. Community Organizer and Hairplugs are finished. This race is over.
Wow, Palin's a pig and McCain's an old fish, I don't know which group should be more offended -- hot women or honorable seniors!
David
I don't attribute this to malice, just to being rattled and trying to shake things up.
The thing is, Mr. Obama -- whom I support-- is not a stand up comedian, and too many of his stump appearances of late have tended to that direction.
The man's gift is in inspiring people to better themselves and leading by being an example of a faithful public servant. He needs to articulate his vision for American and quit trying to sling mud, as he's no good at it and is prone to gaffe when he gets off message. All politicians screw up like this, but his professions of a higher, better, form of rhetoric "above the fray," as it were, means he'll get all the more heat when he condescends to being petty or insensitive to the barbs in his own rhetoric. Instead of playing to the sophomoric reactions of his base, he needs to be seeking the inspired confidence of the middle.
It appears that the Messiah is wont to lapse into passive-aggression when a woman gets under his skin.
During her speech, how many of Mrs. Palin's attacks upon Mr. Obama were couched in plausible deniability? I didn't count any.
If Obambi weren't a wimp he'd directly confront Mrs. Palin, but if that's too much he might have a good cry on Oprah's couch to get in touch with himself.
spaulding: it's the Obama campaign trope of the day, Beckel used it, Biden used it, it's obviously coordinated. Obama is so off his game and so angry and pissed off he went just a little bit too blunt and cute. He craved some partisan love so badly after getting beat up recently that he ruined the effect of the subtle dig, and over-did it.
I've just been reading Spengler and I realized, the campaign has been over for a week. It's only because it is that Obama is making these errors and getting so bent out of shape. Barring a HUGE game-changing gaffe, like McCain shits on stage at the debates, this election is over.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JI03Aa02.html
good article pretty much sums it up. Dunno why we were ever worried about this guy. I guess it could have happened if McCain had dropped dead before picking Palin. No chance now, though.
anybody notice that the crowd was ancient, not unlike the gop convention?
if obama is hoping for a youth turnout, his audience should give him room to pause.
I'm betting that one of the ways gallup screens its likely voters...
college students who have not registered for an absentee ballot at the time of their polling.
putting lipstick on a pit bull (or a bad plan) wont make it anything but a pit bull
and the bad plan is still a bad plan.
Obama isn't not Presidential material. He obviously is a good community organizer and likes making speeches--why doesn't he continue in that vein?
Sadly, he talks extemporaneously like a esoteric political wonk, a yawning analyst, and a deep thinker baffled by darkness, who would never make a major grammatical error--except overuse of um, er, eh, hold on, let, let, let, me say one thing, and here's the deal--and for all that we get surprising gaffes all the time.
These were prepared comments. But if you bend over backwards to assume he didn't intend them to mean Palin, he would have had to realize the joke when the crowd guffawed, and if he hadn't intended the insult, he would have apologized then.
Think Obama would have a problem with the old southern expression "A coon in the henhouse is still a coon"? He and the Democrats would be screaming. BHO is in slow meltdown. Bye bye Barry!
Here is the salient point about this episode: it has nothing to do with what Obama meant by the statement, and everything to do with how it was perceived, and he should have known this.
Effective public speaking requires not simply that you construct wordings that contain your meanings, but that these wording CONVEY those meanings to the audience. This requires of the public speaker the necessary perceptivity and intelligence to accurately assess how his or her words will be perceived and interpreted.
In delivering these words in this way to this audience, he demonstrated a quite profound lack of judgement; even someone predisposed to believing the phrase was not meant as a stab at Palin (as I am--I mean, it's really a pretty common phrase) has to allow that Obama was downright doltish for not realizing how this speech would be received and reacted to.
And since so much of Obama's appeal is bound up in his supposed oratorical skills--given that his record of accomplishment is relatively abbreviated--this performance comes off as a disappointingly amateurish self-inflicted wound.
Obama is supposed to be perceptive and canny, full of discernment and good judgement, not to mention post-partisan. This performance spoils this personae like a turd in a wading pool.
The Repubs' reaction is irrelevant here(except to their own image, and they may hurt themselves if they over-react). Instead of fulminating against people for reacting as they choose to do, which is as stupid and ineffectual a strategy as exists in persuational politics ("Hey, you stupid idiots, stop thinking the way you do and think the way I do! I'm so tired of how stupid you are!"), use this episode as an object lesson in how not to run your mouth.
OBAMA MUST THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE STUPID !!!
It's one thing when Obama tries to cover up mistakes he's
made in private, or when he feebly tries to cover up or misdirect
us, by saying that he never heard Wright's anti-American sermons
over a 20 year period ... but, when Obama tells us that the
Palin lipstick/pig remark wasn't an insult directed towards
Governor Palin, then Obama is adding insult to injury towards
the American people. This creep is not Presidential material.
P.S. The biased main stream liberal press which is attempting damage control for Obama, also must think the American people are stupid
Complete Obama quote:
"John McCain says he's about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is, 'Watch out George Bush -- except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics -- we're really going to shake things up in Washington,'" he 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. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."
Where's the reference to Sarah Palin? There isn't any. It's a common phrase and Obama even explained the context. So common even John McCain has been known to use it.
John McCain: In Iowa last October, McCain drew comparisons between Hillary Clinton's current health care plan and the one she championed in 1993: "I think they put some lipstick on the pig, but it's still a pig." He used the same line in May.
John McCain would be an even worse president than Bush. He'd rather lose his honor than lose a campaign.
McCain has proposed to bankrupt the country even faster than Bush with bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% and more tax breaks for fossil fuel industries. Think any of that will trickle down to the rest of us? He'll give you a tax "credit" less than half what it takes to go out and buy health insurance for your family but you're on your own after that. He thinks we can throw the Russians out of the G8 when in fact the Russians would have to vote themselves out. Even the Bush Administration thinks that's nutty. Everyone from the Iraqi government to the Bush Administration has adopted Obama's timetable for getting out of Iraq but McCain still wants to stay for four, a hundred or a thousand years, or whatever it is this week.
Pigs will fly before any of that works.
howard is and idiot but I will address him personaly.
Howard YOU are an Idiot.
how can you insult a babe?
I think Obama used the simile on purpose but it was no insult.
anonymous? fucking coward
markg8: The first paragraph of your quote was cribbed from a Toles political cartoon. See it here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/ssi/images/Toles/c_09052008_520.gif
Obama the plagiarizer strikes again. I've already explained the CLIMATE and the CONTEXT of the remark in my original post. Ignore at your own peril.
Had Hillary made any claim to the lipstick meme with her healthcare plan, McCain's use of the hoary old aphorism might stick. She didn't, it doesn't.
The rest of your post is irrelevant talking points intended to cloud, shroud and Dowdify the issue.
It is quite justified to assume that Obama's comment had Sarah Palin in mind, since as early as Sept 3rd this same joke/analogy was discussed in DU (Democratic Underground) and it referenced to the Palin pitbull/lipstick statement.
Look here and you be the judge:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6915478#6915540
amadeao are you a moron?
of course they used her lipstick words
but it did NOT mean she was a pig
he quoted the fictional mccain
and cartoonist stole the line from the Democrats who used it at DNC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any person with any familiarity with muslims knows that mentioning the word "pig" and any reference to any individual is a vile insult. Muslims consider pigs to be the most disgusting creatures that exist. Obama's wording is obviously meant to reassure his muslim supporters that he has not become apostate, as well as to poke fun at the one he considers to be his primary opponent.
Obama's comment is no more innocently intended than saying: "You can put a monkey in a sport coat, but he is still a monkey, and that doesn't make him president."
aha one of the Wackos posts!
Alaska tundra you bloody little wack job!
he did not do REzko a favor but evident you and Mccain are computer illiterate
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