Drudge is headlining, blogs are buzzing and the media is talking about it. But before people go off the deep end, this is an expression that has been used before and Barack Obama did not call Sarah Palin a "pig."
The video above shows the comment that is being spoken about all over the Internet, but the full statement is:
"You can put lipstick on a pig, 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.
Senator Barack Obama is not the first politician to use that expression and he will not be the last, but it has started another round of "gotcha" from the initial reporting that only showed the lipstick on a pig comments, such as the Drudge headline. ABC's
Political Punch reports that obviously some in the crowd listening to Obama thought he was referring to Palin and applauded.
The crowd rose and applauded, some of them no doubt thinking he may have been alluding to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's ad lib during her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."
Other reports, such as the Wall Street Journal's
Washington Wire points out another instance where lipstick has been brought up,
"This isn’t the first time in a 24-hour period that lipstick has become an issue. As he was introducing Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan said Palin had “zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick.”"
The McCain campaign instantly came to the forefront with a conference call, where former Mass. Governor Jane Swift told reporters she believed it was a sexist jab aimed at Sarah Palin and stated,
"As far as I know there is only one candidate in this contest who wears lipstick."
Despite the play this is getting in the media, the expression about putting lipstick on a pig is not new and has been used before by politicians, one specific instance brought up by the Obama campaign is when John McCain used the expression when speaking about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.
Barack Obama has also used the expression before, as reported by the
Washington Post back in September of 2007, where he was discussing General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and the mission President Bush gave them for Iraq, where Obama said,
"I think that both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are capable people who have been given an impossible assignment. George Bush has given a mission to General Petraeus, and he has done his best to try to figure out how to put lipstick on a pig."
The audience may have assumed Obama was referring, at least partially to Sarah Palin, but many others on both sides of the aisle, see it for what it most probably was, and that is an expression that has been used by many, in politics and in every day life.
