...very nearly as old as McCain, I do not appreciate being told I'll stink in eight years, change or no change, thank you very much.
Obama: "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 After Eight Years"
[From Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post]
And speaking as a fish who's voted Democrat for nigh onto half a century I call bullshit on the lipstick gag too, no matter Obama's staff and corps of sycophantic bloggers (the very gang that was shocked - shocked! - by a satyric New Yorker cover only a few short weeks ago) now protest it's a hoary old joke that's been repeated many times, yes, of course, of course, but this time it was a clear reference to Sarah Palin and everybody there knew it, and you know it and I know it too. And that stinks, and it stinks right now.
The Democrats disappoint.
2 comments:
are you going out of your way to take offense again? it seems pretty clear to me that the old fish mentioned here is the bush regime, which, even when wrapped in mcCain "change" still stinks after eight years. you used to think so too. you're really reaching to somehow take offense at this one. and the pig? wtf? hello? big reaching all over the place, methinks.
It's not the pig, it's the lipstick. Palin claimed that gag, lipstick on a pit bull, only a week ago, and it was odds on the most quoted line from her debut speech. Obama, master orator, and any speechwriter good enough to play in the big time knows, or damn well should know, that until the end of this political season any - any - lipstick joke will be interpreted as a reference to Palin's riff, and nothing else. To claim otherwise is disingenuous. And as to the fish, yes, in conjunction with the pig crack, I think it was a comment on McCain's age.
In any case, either way, it was dumb, dumb, dumb. What has it accomplished? As far as I can see, all Obama managed to do with his language was lose another day. You can blame it on the press if you want to; you can blame it on boneheads like me; you can blame it on McCain. It doesn't matter. There are precious few days remaining and he can't afford to throw them away.
There are plenty - plenty - of substantive arguments to make against McCain-Palin. Obama should make them. Cute little rhetorical flourishes only play into the R's hand. It's dumb, and if they don't know that by now they had better start learning damn fast.
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