Friday, September 12, 2008

Ditch the lipstick debate


The most striking feature of the Republican Party's mocking denunciation of Barack Obama's use of "lipstick-on-a-pig" is it portrays the moose meat-eating, wolf-shooting, tough-as-a-pit bull hockey mom Sarah Palin as the frail victim of overbearing sexism.

Turns out, though, that "lipstick-on-a-pig" actually is more of a favorite, all-occasion applause line for Republicans, not Democrats.

In the 2004 presidential campaign, Vice President Cheney used it three times in speeches against Democrat John Kerry. His wife, Lynne Cheney, used it once against Kerry. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner used "lipstick on a pig" metaphor to describe lousy GOP fundraising.

John McCain's onetime press aide, Torie Clarke, titled her 2006 book, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game.

And McCain himself used it several times recently, once to describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan. Whatta ya know? No yelps then of sexism from the holier-than-thou Republican morality police or when he told the unrepeatable "joke" about rape and a gorilla or his scurrilous slur on Chelsea Clinton's parenthood.

Variations of the proverb can be traced to the 16th century, although the first use of "lipstick" wasn't until 1926 in a Los Angeles Times column by editor Charles Lummis.

This is a phony issue, an attempted smear of Obama, an effort to insulate Palin from questions and criticism of her reed-thin qualifications, and protect McCain from debating issues with meaning.

The GOP needs to stop this meaningless mudslinging and get on with debating real issues that affect real people.




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