You have to admit that this presidential campaign is anything but boring. Every day there's a new revelation about someone or someone from one of the campaigns said something to offend the other. That's politics and it always has been. It's just that we're saturated nowadays with media--from television to talk radio to the Internet--that there's no getting away from it.
Case in point: During a speech yesterday, Barrack Obama continued his worn-out argument that John McCain's election would simply be a third term for President Bush. After rattling off a laundry list of policies he claimed McCain and Bush share, he added: "You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still gonna stink after eight years."
Was this a deliberate move on Obama's part to fire back at Gov. Sarah Palin's convention joke that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick? It's wasn't good judgment on his part, to be sure. But I must grudgingly give him the benefit of the doubt on this gaffe. Listening to the remark in context with what he said before and after, he seemed to be using "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" as a common saying. The man may be a liberal, but he's not stupid enough to intentionally make such a degrading personal remark. At least I don't think so.
But it's the reaction of his supporters--especially those behind him--that raises the debate. They obviously perceived it to be a jab at Gov. Palin. Based on their facial expressions and their reactions, that's how they took it. The Associated Press reported that it drew "an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin's joke even if it's not what Obama meant." The video proves the point.
(To be fair, this clip does leave out what Obama said immediately after, which was: "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still gonna stink after eight years.")
The remark may not have been deliberate, but it certainly had its effect, unintentional or not, and Obama should own up to it. His reaction? His campaign cites instances when Senator McCain used the expression in various speeches during his career. While it may be true that it's a commonly used expression, it's the context here that is important: how and when he used it during his speech. "Who has been talking about lipstick lately?" noted McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. "It was obvious. The crowd went crazy because of it."
The McCain/Palin campaign's response was a new ad entitled "Lipstick" and a call for Obama to apologize. Are they making more out of it than is necessary? Probably. Still, if he made the remark without thinking how it would be perceived, Obama should admit he didn't mean it that way and apologize for doing so. Unlikely to happen, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment