Lipstick on a Pig versus Wrestling One

by the puppet mistress | How stupid are we here in America?  More to the purpose, how stupid does John McCain think we are?

Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists--including me--for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.....Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

Klein is talking about an instance of supreme sleaziness in McCain's ads, not the current faux outrage du jour, but I picked the quote because it references certain problems McCain himself had in the past that bear on some of his own past failure to be sensitive to turns of phrase.

Talk about wrestling a pig, a phrase McCain used with respect to his fight against the Romney campaign and which some people chose to misconstrue as calling Romney himself a pig. 

Now Obama's in the midst of wrestling a pig (where pig = a tactic that's designed to get you dirty).  He should remember McCain's line about why you shouldn't bother:  "You get dirty, and the pig likes it."

What I hate most about American political life is people pretending to be outraged about an unfortunate choice of words that they know weren't intended in a malign sense. Here's an example of someone who has held himself out in the past as reasonable and level-headed who has decided to play Rove's game and pretend to see this as "sexist."  Pathetic.

Does Morissey or does McCain himself remember when John McCain, who is in his seventies remember, referred to the "tarbaby" story from Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus?  As a kid he either heard the story of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox or saw Song of the South.  He grew up in the days before people understood "institutionalized racism."   

That phrase was around in my childhood and I never actually heard it applied as a racist slur.  It was a metaphor for a futile struggle.  But I know for a fact that some people used it as a racist slur and that's not even taking into account the way it references a "comic" story growing out of the enslavement and oppression of African Americans.  That's why I have never been tempted to use that metaphor.  Of course I am quite a lot younger than John McCain and in my childhood, things had already changed.  Even so, the usefulness of the metaphor as a metaphor has often blinded people to its underlying themes.

When McCain used the phrase, a lot of people got upset and the more he tried to explain, the more it was as if he were struggling to free himself from partially solidified tar or wrestling with a pig.   He didn't mean to endorse racism, but he simply had a blind spot for institutionalized and historical racism that made him indifferent (worst case) or oblivious (best case) to the implications of his choice of words.

Both that and the Confederate flag issue---or the issues together--- revealed a certain insensitivity to cultural changes which have made what used to be considered acceptable metaphors no longer so. 

But his own experiences in phrase-dropping ought to make him a little bit chary of calling out other people who use a turn of phrase which---in context---is highly liable to be misunderstood and trying to use it as a bludgeon.

But lipstick on a pig is a very ordinary metaphor, standing for the proposition that you can't change essentially unpalatable facts by dressing them up (or by putting them in the mouth of a beautiful, lipstick wearing Governor).  The fact that she called herself a "pit bull" changes nothing.

Making fun of Obama doesn't change the fact that the Republicans have no new ideas at all what to do about the economy, our international standing, the energy crisis, the health care crisis, or global warming.

The whole thing is stupid in any case. Glenn Greenwald points out:

We're fighting multiple wars; our oldest and most established financial institutions are on the verge of collapse; we've fundamentally transformed and then dismantled our constitutional framework over the last eight years, etc. etc. But the Right and their media partners are striving to ensure that our election this year is going to be dominated and determined by whether John Kerry looks stupid in wind-surfing tights Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a "pig" when he invoked a meaningless cliché.

It isn't surprising that the McCain campaign wants this sort of tawdry, Freak Show/Reality Show vapidity to determine the outcome of the election. If you were them, wouldn't you want that, too? And though it's not news that establishment media outlets are so easily and happily manipulated by these tactics, tactics which enable them to cover "stories" which their empty-headed reporters can easily comprehend, it is still striking to watch the now-decades-old process unfold and observe how absolutely nothing has changed:

NOTE TO OBAMA.  Don't let Karl Rove drive the discussion.  Ignore the slurs.  Focus on how wrong they are and how much worse another Republican administration will make their lives, not just collectively but individually.

This is abject, arrant, pathetic nonsense being fomented by people who have got NOTHING ELSE.  People need to see ads focusing on what the GOP has "accomplished" and on Obama's better ideas.

People aren't as stupid as the Republicans think....though I'm beginning to think the "base" might be.  The GOP knows them better than I do.  Focus on the majority of Americans who aren't stupid.

Democrats need to quit giving energy to Republican nonsense and focus on the issues.  that probably goes for bloggers like me as well. 

RECENT POSTINGS

Needful Diversons:  Going Out to John McCain & His Rovian Campaign, "Son of a Gun" by the La's

What If All the King's Horses and All the King's Men/Can't Put McCain's Honor Together Again?

Sarah Palin:  Still Telling the $320 Million Whopper About the Bridge to Nowhere?

Obama on Palin & McCain as Agents of Change:  "How Do They Have the Nerve?"

McTemper, McTemper! or, "He Ain't Mad, He's Just Intense."  Also:  Ed Koch's Fear of Palin

Needful Diversions:  Gangsta Teletubbies; Spongebob Sings Eminem

McCain Campaign Ignores Heart's Request to Stop Using Their Songs

Obama:  "They Must Think You're Stupid"

Bill Maher New Rules (Sep 5)---"Sarah Barracuda, Meet Joey the Shark"

Memeorandum has more on this nonsensical shitstorm here.

RECENT POSTINGS

Sarah Palin:  Still Telling the $320 Million Whopper About the Bridge to Nowhere?

Obama on Palin & McCain as Agents of Change:  "How Do They Have the Nerve?"

McTemper, McTemper! or, "He Ain't Mad, He's Just Intense."  Also:  Ed Koch's Fear of Palin

Needful Diversions:  Gangsta Teletubbies; Spongebob Sings Eminem

McCain Campaign Ignores Heart's Request to Stop Using Their Songs

Obama:  "They Must Think You're Stupid"

Bill Maher New Rules (Sep 5)---"Sarah Barracuda, Meet Joey the Shark"

Comments

[hillcountry]

I'm a political junkie, and I can hardly watch the TV anymore. You've got Steve Doocy on one channel and Joe Scarborough on the other ranting about this. This! Joe should know better, but he just loves to hear himself talk. Meanwhile, none of them will dig up the clip of McCain calling Hillary Clinton a pig. Oh, I'm sorry, it was clear he was talking about her health plan. But with Obama...

And besides, when did Palin corner the market on using the word "lipstick"? Did she come out with a patent in the last 10 days? The double standards the Republicans are allowed to get away with sickens me!

[magnum]

Mccais might just win for the wealth of experience he has.