‘Lipstick on a pig’ comment: storm in a teacup or high slander?

Barack Obama's comment, "You can put lipstick on a pig - it's still a pig", used this week to describe John McCain's 'change campaign' only days after Sarah Palin had described herself as 'a pitbull in lipstick', has stirred up America's political pundits almost as much as it has the Republicans. But is it a storm in a teacup or high slander?

First, what does the expression mean? Generally it's accepted to mean that you can dress something up to look new or different, but it doesn't change what it is. Examining the political history of the expression, Ben Zimmer, writing on Slate points out that John McCain himself used the metaphor last year to describe Hillary Clinton's health proposal.

So, was Obama intending to offend or not? Noam Schiber, writing for the New Republic, reckons it's simply wishful thinking to make any link between "the pig in lipstick" and Sarah Palin. He writes: "There may be one or two deranged Hillary dead-enders out there willing to believe Obama called Sarah Palin a pig. But there are many, many more 'ordinary Americans' who've heard the expression several thousand times and have no idea what the fuss is about."

It's not what Obama said that's the problem, says John Dickerson, also on Slate, it's the time he'll have to spend tidying up afterwards. "Obama is in a bit of a fix," Dickerson writes; every day he spends "adjudicating this pig business" is "another day he's not talking about something else". He concludes: "Obama should have known better." Conservative columnist and Fox News contributor, Michelle Malkin, agrees: "It's yet another in a long line of rhetorical gaffes that demonstrate his [Obama's] ineptitude."

"If I were a pig or a pit bull, I might be offended," says Elizabeth Snead for the LA Times. "But right now I'm a little more worried about my mortgage, the price of gas and the economy."

As for Vasko Kohlmayer on the popular American Thinker blog, he wonders if it's possible that "Barack Obama's apparent condescension towards women is the legacy of the Muslim school he went to in his formative primary school years?" But it's Mark Silva for the Washington Bureau who makes the most poignant comment: "As anyone knows," he quips, "lipstick can smear."

FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 11, 2008