The Lipstick Controversy: Obama Responds

You've been awful cryptic these days... what bigger issue?

I think it's great. He is appropriately unapologetic about his innocent remark, and he is appropriately outraged at McCain's phony outrage. He encapsulated my Democratic sentiments perfectly and with passion.

Since Barack Obama has proven himself smarter than just about any of the nattering nitwits in the blogosphere, I bet he will continue to exploit this as an example of the broken politics of Washington and McCain's cynical Bush-like approach to it.

THAT's what Obama is doing here. This isn't defensive. Defensive would be, "I meant no harm to Governor Palin and I apologize if she construed it that way. She's a courageous woman and I certainly have respect for her..." THAT would be defensive. Instead, Obama is taking the phony outrage from McCain and using it against McCain.

I just watched Obama’s response to the “pig” incident.

This guy is going to lose big. He’s flustered, upset, not in control of the message and he made sure this will have a few more days of legs.

Bill Clinton could have handled this without breaking a sweat. Bubba would have turned this around in two minutes and have the republicans knocked back on our heels wondering how he did it.

But do you think he’s going to help poor Barack?

I can just hear him on the phone this morning. “Ya, Barry. You’ve got yourself in some pickle there. If I think of something to say, I’ll be sure to call. Good luck.”

(click)

(reposted from a previous thread)

Far be it from me, Joe, to have any clue as to what will be enough to please the Democrats........what, maybe replace the Constitution with the collected works of Karl Marx?

As to the bigger issue, my speculation is that it has something to do with the left being consumed with parsing every sentence ever uttered by Sarah Palin and losing site of the big picture of voters who don't fantasize about "DESTROYING" Sarah Palin as Elrod posted last week (Friday I believe).

The best analogy I can come up with is being so fixated with matching up the serial numbers on the box cars and being oblivious to the fact that the train is pulling out of the station.....in the direction they don't want to go.

They can parse, whine and deflect all they want about the pig comment........but that train has left the station and there is no pulling it back short of making an apology.......which I bet in a day or two he will do.....sort of.

The regular people know that the line is now "owned" by Sarah Palin and the regular people could give a rat's ass if any one used it before. For Barackstar to go anywhere near that line now, the regular people know that a) he clearly was making a snide reference back to her personally.......or b) he is clueless about how to conduct himself within the earshot of women.

Nice try, jwest. Obama completely turned this around on McCain and reminded voters that the "good" McCain of 2000 that made a cameo at the RNC has been re-buried again.

He was LAUGHING at the notion. He was not stuttering or stammering the way he was at that infamous ABC debate. THAT was Obama flustered and upset. THIS, on the other hand, is Obama at his best, playing rope-a-dope. He takes the grenade thrown at him and fires it right back.

Superdestroyer,
Which line is "owned" by Sarah Palin? You think regular people don't know the phrase "lipstick on a pig?" Have you EVER heard anybody consider that phrase sexist? Honestly?

BTW, if you listen to what Obama says right before the lipstick on a pig line, he is talking about McCain, not Palin!

I actually think "catnip for the media" is as apt a phrase as I've ever heard for these faux outrages. Very well said, imho...

casualobserver said: Far be it from me, Joe, to have any clue as to what will be enough to please the Democrats........what, maybe replace the Constitution with the collected works of Karl Marx?

Your bad....

Far be it from me, Joe, to have any clue as to what will be enough to please the Democrats........what, maybe replace the Constitution with the collected works of Karl Marx?

Hrmmm... didn't the Bush run government just assume ownership of nearly half the homes in the United States?

Well, I'm no Democrat, but I think Obama went out there and pretty much said what the majority of posters here and everywhere have been saying. This has got to be one of the stupidest "controversies" I've ever heard of. And the fact that we have to talk about it isn't helping us in any way with any issues. But then again, issues don't matter. If this is what we have to look forward to for the next two months I might as well lock myself up in the basement...

Obama didn't recover. And does he really want to disparage the media, who have been part of his campaign (despite Thom Hartmann's laughable statement today about the "right-wing" [sic] media)?

Moreover, in other remarks he made, he hung himself, *** BIG TIME *** He was talking about McCain and saying, "You can't take an old, dead fish and wrap paper around it that says 'Change' on it."

That metaphor, the fish with false labeling, applies to his, *** OBAMA'S *** campaign and "change" that is regression to Carter-and-before old, failed, tired Democratic policies.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden just made another blunder, telling a guy attending a rally who is in a wheelchair to stand up and be recognized. [chuckle] Biden is better than Gerald Ford or George W. Bush when it comes to inadvertent comedy.

DLS,
You should go read some Orwell and get back to us.

DLS,
Carter has not been President in 28 years. I've seen nothing in Obama's plan that resembles Carter's. Calling him the reincarnation of Carter is as silly as calling any Republican the reincarnation of Hoover. It isn't 1980 anymore. The tax code is nothing like it was then. The government is very different now.

Credit much of that Reagan. Credit much of it to Clinton. And who knows, maybe the Bush's affected the government in a non-disastrous way too. But calling Obama's change simply a return to jimmy Carter is pretty vacuous absent a more substantive analysis.

catnip for bloggers as well. I find it really disgusting actually that with all of the important issues that we all face that this is relevant at all. It's politics at its worst. You want to know why the best and the brightest don't go into politics? This is it. This hurts our nation.

BTW, this whole incident reminds me of why Brooks Jackson may be too optimistic. Facts be damned. This campaign is about innuendo and false outrage.

On a more serious note, why is McCain even pushing this? It makes him look like a fool. Independents are unimpressed by the charge. And Democrats are fired up that Obama defended himself and fought back. Does this rally the Republicans?

Here's my guess on why McCain feigned outrage over the lipstick on a pig comment. Obama was hitting McCain/Palin on what has become their biggest weakness: integrity. Since the RNC McCain and Palin have tried to pitch themselves as the candidates of reform. But in speech after speech they are completely empty about what they will do to reform things. What's worse, Palin has gone the full Hillary-at-Tuzla with her Bridge to Nowhere BS and the media keeps mocking her on it. So they double down, stick with the script, and plow ahead. When Obama started gaining traction by stripping the bark off the reform tree, McCain played the gender card to distract the media from Obama's real charge.

I can't think of any other rational reason why they would claim that "lipstick on a pig" is a sexist reference to Sarah Palin.

Interestiing article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-pali...

elrod: I can't think of any other rational reason why they would claim that "lipstick on a pig" is a sexist reference to Sarah Palin.

There's your problem, elrod. You're thinking rationally. The whole idea is to keep people from thinking rationally.

DLS:

ooooo, metaphor! how thoughtless! hope no one asks a blind man to "see what i mean?" this campaign. then, surely, all hell will break loose! :p

The attacks on McCain are backfiring, despite desperate wishes to the contrary.

If Obama were well-grounded, he'd direct attention instead to, say, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, with government literally in bed with industry (go look it up if you don't know already), and with a certain corporation that is associated with a certain current Bush administration refusing to cooperate.

Onleyone: I suppose I am asking to much of the blind, to see what should be obvious. (Same for reasoning in place of emotion, it seems too often.)

Too much for the "challenged"? Too bad...

For those who are too challenged: the corporation refusing to cooperate with the corruption (including sexual favors, in addition to supervisor-subordinate relations at Interior, as part of payments off the books by industry) associated with the Payment in Kind (oil in place of cash for royalty payments to the federal government by the oil companies) is Chevron. YOU'RE WELCOME.

After today's round of insights, I am going to guess the Dems here see no likely negative campaign effect from comments like these either........

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: " I believe that those white women are Republican anyway."

Ka---ching! Gender, religious beliefs and racial profiling all in one breath. Who needs Karl Rove when we have the Dems themselves. If you guys think parsing the Bridge to Nowhere is going to win this war over ad hominems in the minds of the relatively apolitcal voter, you guys have lost November in September.

OK- This phrase is very popular among Republicans. It has been used by McCain himself, John Boehner and many others prominent in the GOP.

Anyone who listens to the speech and not the sound bite can get only one impression of what the phrase was intended to mean. By no means should Obama apologize--- but he needs to keep responding --- with his own ad if necessary. The GOP is up to their standard tricks-- its disgusting-but not surprising. Now what kind of change will McCain bring to Washington if he can't even change the way his own political party campaigns??? Maybe HE can't change the GOP, but they certainly seem to have changed HIM.

BTW, it is insulting to Palin-- a strong woman in her own right --- to insinuate that she needs to be protected by McCain and can't respond on her own to this perceived "slight". More importantly, It insults every woman who has suffered genuine sexism to play the faux sexist card with accompanying faux outrage.

Seems the folks at Reason looked into the "lipstick" issue and found that leading Republicans made the same comment.
Dick Chenney, Fred Thompson and even John McCain made the same statement.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128711.html
Even the Spectator, those far Left loonoes, doesn't see this as an issue