Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

Lipstick And Double Standards

[NOTE: This post has been Updated]

I?ve just had a very bad experience, and the worst part of it is that I asked for it. Twice. Last night I watched MSNBC?s Chris Matthews spend an entire hour on Hardball last night defending Obama?s innocence of any innuendo in his ?lipstick? remark and attacking McCain and the Republicans for making an issue of it. And, obviously not having learned my lesson, this morning I watched the same thing for an hour or so as MSNBC?s Joe Scarborough and Democratic guests did the same thing (with the notable exception of Mort Zuckerman of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report) on Morning Joe.

Too bad. I used to like Joe. Now it?s as though the whole of MSNBC is reading from Keith Olbermann?s script. Maybe from now on we should start referring to MoveOn.NBC. Even Chuck Todd, the normally sensible NBC polls and numbers guy, was totally out of it. He said Obama couldn?t possibly have been thinking of Palin when he made his lipstick remark because his campaign had decided to ignore Palin. Really? Does the head NBC political guy really not, say, read Politico? Jim VanDeHei and Mike Allen reported there that ?Obama, Dems sharpen personal attacks on Palin.?

Barack Obama and his Democratic allies are intensifying their attacks on Sarah Palin, as her sustained and surprising central role in this race is upending Obama?s strategy and often overshadowing McCain.

Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan on Tuesday ? introducing Joe Biden at a campaign event ? ripped into Palin?s record and punctuated it with this snarky jab. ?There?s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick,? he said. Later in the day, Obama used a variation of the lipstick line, though he was clearly talking about the McCain-Palin reform rhetoric. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said. "It's still a pig."

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, as part of his endorsement of Obama, said Palin ?scares the hell out of me.? And Obama hit Palin in nearly a dozen different press releases ? one day after drawing laughs at a campaign stop by calling her a ?moose shooter.?
....
The Obama campaign is calculating that it must reckon with Palin and the big public boost she has provided McCain in the past week. When Palin was first named, the Obama staff attacked, then he pulled back. Now, reflecting the threat posed by Palin, Obama is taking the unusual route of attacking the opposition?s No. 2, a job that would more typically be left to Biden, who focused more on McCain and President Bush

But apparently Chuck Todd doesn?t read Politico. Or listen to former Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, who the day before Obama?s lipstick remark took issue with Palin?s making light of Obama?s experience as a community organizer by commenting on CNN that ?Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor.? By some curious co-incidence, Democratic Representative Steve Cohen repeated the same line on the floor of the House yesterday:

Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen riled Republicans Wednesday after he compared Barack Obama to Jesus Christ and suggested Sarah Palin is akin to Pontius Pilate.

The Tennessee Democrat, who supports Obama, was on the House floor giving a one-minute speech when he offered the comparisons.

?If you want change, you want the Democratic Party,? Cohen said. ?Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus, who our minister prayed about. Pontius Pilate was a governor.?

I assume neither Ms. Brazile nor Rep. Cohen really believe Gov. Palin is going to murder Obama, but maybe they are afraid that she will, metaphorically speaking, nail him to the cross.

Imagine, if you can, the volcanic uproar that would have come from the Obama camp if Republican operatives had likened McCain to Jesus and Obama, or Biden, to his murderer. Or, while you?re imagining, imagine if, say, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, calling Obama?s opposition to drilling in ANWR and elsewhere part and parcel of his socialistic environmentalism, had said something like, ?Obama is a classic watermelon man: green on the outside; red on the inside.? Or if McCain, criticizing Obama?s billion dollars in earmarks, had said something like, ?For. Sen. Obama to criticize Gov. Palin on earmarks is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black (especially because she Gov. Palin's record on earmarks is a shiny copper kettle).?

Your imagination may vary, but I don?t think the responses of the Obamanuts would have been mild. Just as they weren?t mild, if you recall, when Linda Ramirez-Sliwinsk, a suburban Illinois Obama delegate, was thrown under the bus and forced to resign when she innocently told two neighbor children ?to quit playing in the tree like monkeys.? The kids were black, and ?monkeys? was taken to be a racial slur. If Obama had uttered his lipstick remark as a delegate to his convention instead of as its nominee, presumably he too would have been forced to stay home.

I have watched the tape of Obama?s lipstick/pig /stinking fish comment several times, and I think it?s clear beyond cavil (unless, of course, you?re an MSNBC commentator) that Obama knew perfectly well what he was saying and how it would be interpreted. He paused after the first part ? ?You can put lipstick on a pig...? ? and waited for the expected laughter and applause before giving the punch line, ?but it?ll still be a pig.? The laughter and applause was clearly at the Palin reference, not the inherent humor of the well-worn and well-known line.

The defense of Obama and his MSNBC flacks ? that he and even McCain had used that expression several times before Palin ? is so irrelevant as to be risible. Those occasions were all before Gov. Palin in effect trademarked all political references to lipstick and made it the best known joke in the country for the six days before Obama tripped over it.

So, no, unless Obama is dumber than a barnyard post, which he isn?t, I don?t think there?s even a remote possibility that he was doing anything other making the equivalent of a bad, off color joke at Gov. Palin?s expense. That doesn?t mean he was calling her a pig, and I think the Republicans have overreacted by charging that?s what he did. But neither do I think his expression was ?innocent,? and I think he lacks the capacity to admit a mistake or apologize.

Those are not admirable qualities in a would-be leader.

UPDATE

Discussing what he superciliously calls ?the silly lipstick flap,? the Washington Post media writer, Howard Kurtz, asks:

Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig? What about the fact that McCain has used ?lipstick on a pig? before?

Before? ?Before? Gov. Palin completely identified herself with using ?lipstick? to make a political point, as I argued above, doesn?t count. Some people in fact do ?seriously believe? that Obama, through a sort of sick humor, did in effect compare Gov. Palin to a pig. Those same people point out that if that was not his intent, surely he realized from the audience reaction that that was what he had done. As the Associated Press noted, his comment was received with ?an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience.? Was his or McCain?s previous use of that expression similarly greeted? Why such a ?raucous? reception here if everyone in the audience hadn?t known this was a reference to Gov. Palin?

For my part, as I?ve said, I don?t believe anyone could ?seriously believe? what Kurtz appears to believe, which is that Obama?s use of the offending expression was what he approvingly quotes Obama saying it was: ?an innocent expression.? He was trying to crack humor at her expense, and it blew up in his face.

But let?s move on (if you?ll pardon the expression) and deconstruct what SLATE calls this ?porcine proverb? a bit to tease out any hidden meanings that may lurk beneath the surface. What Gov. Palin said, now famously, is that the only difference between a soccer mom and a pit bull is ... lipstick. But according to Obama and his riposte with the porcine proverb, adding lipstick doesn?t really change anything. So, perhaps the deep, inner meaning of Obama?s comment was that all soccer moms are essentially pit bulls.

I suspect Gov. Palin might take that as a compliment.

UPDATE II

Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics gets this exactly right, i.e., he said what I said.

I give Obama credit for being a smart guy and, after nineteen grueling months on the trail, also being well versed in choosing his words carefully and understanding their meaning - either real or implied. My sense is he knew what he was doing when he chose that particular phrase - and the reaction of the crowd indicated they knew what Obama was saying as well. That said, it stretches credulity to jump to the conclusion and/or the accusation that he was directly calling Sarah Palin a pig. Of course he wasn?t.

Obama probably thought it was a clever play on words to take Palin?s signature line and turn it on its head. Irrespective of what he might have been trying to do, however, the words he said are the words he said....

Imagine for a moment if John McCain had used a similar shopworn phrase in reference to Barack Obama?s policies. Suppose he said, ?Obama says he?s going to cut your taxes but he?s really going to raise them. My friends, it?s time for some straight talk about taxes, it?s time to call a spade a spade.?

Do you think for a second the Joe Kleins, Andrew Sullivans, and Josh Marshalls of the world wouldn?t scream from the rooftops that McCain had used a racial slur against Obama? Of course they would - and they?d scoff at the notion that McCain was somehow unaware of how that phrase would be interpreted. Anyone who tried to argue that McCain was simply using a well known phrase that predated the current presidential race would be tagged as an apologist for racism. Even if McCain hadn?t meant it that way, it wouldn?t matter.

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).