'Lipstick' jungle
Posted: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9:43 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Sarah Palin
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum and NBC/NJ's Matthew Berger and Adam Aigner-Treworgy
The McCain campaign is calling on Obama to apologize after he said these harmless remarks mocking Team McCain's call for change.
"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,'" Obama said today at a town hall in Lebanon, VA.
He then added, "That's not change. That's just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you can ... put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change; it's still going to stink. After eight years, we've had enough of the same old thing. It's time to bring about real change to Washington."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, Chair of the newly found Palin Truth Squad, argued on a conference call sponsored by the campaign that Obama clearly directed the comment toward Palin. "It is clear to me, as I am sure it will be to fair minded Republicans, Democrats, and Independents across the country that Sen. Obama owes Gov Palin an apology," Swift said. Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella later added, “Barack Obama’s comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Governor Palin an apology.”
But when you read Obama's quote above, it's pretty clear that the "lipstick" remark wasn't directed to Palin at all. And the Obama campaign fired back at what it called McCain's "increasingly dishonorable campaign."
“Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy -- the same analogy that Sen. McCain himself used about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year," said Obama senior adviser Anita Dunn. "This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.”
Indeed, as NBC's Carrie Dann points out, McCain himself used this phrasing during the primary campaign. On October 11, 2007, he criticized Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan after rolling out his own plan.
"I think they put some lipstick on a pig," he said to the Des Moines Rotary Club when asked if he could put a price tag on Hillarycare, "but it's still a pig."
Still, that did not stop Swift from demanding Obama apologize to Palin over the comment -- and from linking this comment to others coming from the Obama campaign she calls sexist.
"As far as I know, she is the only one of four presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates who wears lipstick," Swift said when pressured to explain why she believes the comment was directed toward Palin. "It can be a very gendered comment. So it's both a gendered comment and there is only one woman in the race. And it's directly analogous to a comment she had made. So it is hard to think that anybody would see this as being directed to anybody but Gov Palin."
