Victor Davis Hansen at the Corner points out an interesting observation that seems to have been ignored with the “Palin-a-Pig” metaphor:
“You can put lipstick on a pig. “It’s still a pig.”
“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”
When read in the entire context you can see what he seems to mean with his dual animate male/female references and why he probably evoked two metaphors: most would think that Obama is talking about both on the ticket and his anger how each has expropriated his change motif.
So in that sense he appears both to insult the 72-year old McCain as the “old fish” that is still going to “stink”, and to refer to Palin, who had famously evoked the metaphor of lipstick in a nationally televised address, as still the pig despite the lipstick.
Where is Brownback to fight back on the fish comment when we need him? 
Ah, the good old days!
P.S. Seriously at some point don’t we wish we could get past the stupid theatrics and start to talk about substantively what McCain will do better than Obama? I can’t even remember what McCain’s health plan is from last year at this point.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
It’s poor form to display your lack of intellectual curiosity and you shouldn’t ask anyone else to do your homework. Realclearpolitics.com has an archive of McCain policy addresses. Go there and read.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I think the “fish” line was definitely the most direct and least ambiguous of the two.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Well concerns about Obama’s fundraising “problems” were premature – he broke his $55 million record, but it is not yet reported by how much.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
“Bears are really, really, stupid animals, and I wish they were all dead.”
-President Obama, addressing the Federal Assembly of Russia
September 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Hey everyone, Palin’s husband, Todd, is a commercial fisherman, so perhaps Obama is trash-talking the whole family, not the ticket.
H/T American Thinker
September 9th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Dotan,
I am making a point about the two campaigns focus on sound bites. I am pretty well knowledgeable of the facts.
It’s even poorer form to not understand the applied uses of hyperbole.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
If Obama agreed to the weekly town halls it would have been more substantive and civil, this is on him
September 9th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
7. Joel,
Yes it would have elevated the debate, but m cheif complaint about McCain has always been he is candidate who runs on sound bites and emotional ideas. I like him, I want to win (mandatory site gesture) but he has never in my mind been a guy to campaign on policy and ideas.
That said he is 1000 times better on ideas than Obama, so he isn’t too bad, but it would be great if we could past all the feigned indignation over this name calling about Palin and start talking about what exactly will be better about a McCain administrator. Too often, in my opinion we tend to focus on the candidate, not the potential policy maker.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
This is really sad that people are running with this. Its going to back fire as soon as they play the clip of McCain saying the exact same thing. This may push the average voter over the edge.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
feigned indignation?? mandatory site gesture??
Jason should have been 86ed from this site long before TLG.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I dont think anyone is running with this. it’ll be a story for a day or two, take us up the 9/11 anniversary and be forgotten about.
what it does is remind people of obama;s misogyny during the primaries, the media’s sexism. give an excuse to play some old clips of his sweetie, periodically, the claws come out, likeable enough gaffes, etc…
the bigger problem for him is the pattern that he’s constantly attacking Palin for things tha only rebound back on him in a far worse manner and is spending all hi stime going after the VP. Unprecedented. Biden is making a gaffe or three a day.(I wonder if the Post will report on his expense accounts for his AMTRAK trips)
McCain is clearly on the offense and driving the coverage. he’s playing this ike a fiddle.
Obama and the media are quickly making this into a contest of who do you like more Barack or Sarah and he is going to lose that every time.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I want some more polls
…
September 9th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
sampo,
Is that where TLG went? He got blocked from commenting? I took off a few weeks from commenting once McCain had locked up the nomination and when I cam back he was gone.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
also, given the connotations made between fish and women and especially in the context Obama used it, I wouldnt be surprised if he was trying to attack her with that line as well.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
also, notice that Obama gets angrier, as he does in that clip, he starts sounding more black and gets into that singsong preacher’s cadence
one of his appeals was that he’s black but he’s not of the jackson/sharpton variety. that he’s half white and has this rich voice and all
the more he starts coming off as the angry black man, the less it helps him
September 9th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
ive been checking out some pro clinton blogs and youd be amazed how many have picked up on the fish remark and its relation to female scent.
any guy who’s ever been in high school or some college pary knows exactly what im talking about
that was no accident from Obama
if what ive seen on some of the blogs represents even a fratcion of what the total reaction is to this, it was not a good day for Obama
September 9th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Are you?—because here is what you yourself wrote:
I suppose I can be forgiven for taking you at your word.
If you really can’t remember—and as a McCain supporter its sort of your job to remember so that you can explain it to others whether here or elsewhere—then go and read, because McCain has been quite forthright with respect to his intentions for our country.
Also recall, only communications theorists—men and women notorious for their lack of ability to communicate—reject sound bites. Those of us who practice communication since the sophists know otherwise (the Sophists and later Aristotle referred to sound bites as enthymemes). Elections are won and lost on the strength of ideas that can be articulated clearly, simply, and memorably. This is the way we play the game. White papers and policy analyses are for legislative aids and think tanks. Real people use real words.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
There is no justice in this world.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
#16… I really don’t see what’s the benefit for Obama to crack a crude, sexist joke like that. That is, unless he wanted to go out of his way to lose a few more female voters.
No, I think it’s more unlikely that he’s just dumb.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Jason, you don’t get it. jim, you do. The PUMAs are livid.
When viewed in the context of his words and action towards Hillary over the past year, and how the word “lipstick” was being used in the last week, there is no way that anyone can come to any other conclusion that he called her a pig and likely inferred that her vagina smelled.
Obama shouldn’t be president of the Mickey Mouse Club, much less the USA.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
dotan,
Look up hyperbole.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
#10 sampo, you have no room to talk.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
jason is serving his country by trying to get mitt elected in 4 years. as evidence, i submit to you his multiple romney-2012 facebook groups he has joined. i still havent figured why that hasn’t forced him to forfeit his r408 soapbox.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Wow. Looks like a WWE smack down a la race 4 2008 style.
Get the chair!
September 9th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
speaking of country serving and the presidency, i still havent figured out why michael moore and bill maher aren’t excited about supporting McCain-Palin when they have several sons serving in iraq. afterall, they opposed bush-cheney because they didn’t have any children serving in iraq…
September 9th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
21. Wow so much smarts on one site.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I’m a PhD rhetorician, little one. I not only know what the term means, I can even pronounce it correctly. And I know other tropes too, e.g. metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. My issue is not with the meaning of the term that you want to misuse. It is simply this: I don’t believe you. You were once again trying to trash our party’s candidate with your insinuations and I really don’t like that.
Why the h*** are you here?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Biden today introduced a state senator and told him to stand up for applause.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRV5Y1JCGRI
The senator was in a wheelchair!
September 9th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
#27 then what are you doing here with your fancy PhD, Dr Dotan? You’re sounding pretty elitist to me, with all your fancy book larnin’. Were you sipping a latte while you wrote that? You disgust me.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
I’m here—and in many other places online, as well as at meetings F2F and knocking on doors—to support and to help elect Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin as our next president and vice president.
Why are you here?
Yes, I drink a lot of lattes.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
dotan,
A phd masquerading as emilia bedillia?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Is this a joke I should be getting?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Also, looks like Obama is following in Biden’s footsteps and plaigiarizng.
Look at this cartton in the WaPo a few days ago and then listen to what Obama says before he makes his lipstick remark. He ripped it off word for word. The man stole his lines from a cartoon. He’s a joke
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2078775/posts
September 9th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
32. If you dont have the intellectual curiosity to look up emilia bedillia I guess I can’t help you.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Yeah. Sorry. Priorities and all that. At the moment I’m trying to persuade some PUMAs on another site that a Palin VP would not make their ovaries state property. I’m arguing in circles mostly. My ability to multitask only goes so far.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I mean, this is clearly a pattern for Obama.
Remember his chief foreign policy advisor calling Clinton a monster?
how she’s likeable enough
how her claws come out
how she feels down, periodically
how she’s annie oakley with a six shooter
his giving her the finger
the brushing his shoulders
the 99 problems and a bitch aint one intro music
palin’s only been around for 10 days and already she’s a pig, smells like fish, a moose shooter, etc…
he clearly has a problem with white women
September 9th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
For further amusement, the good reverend Jeremiah Wright has been named as “the other man” in a divorce. Apparently he had an affair with a church worker this spring.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09092008/news/nationalnews/o_pastor_in_sex_scandal_128142.htm
Totally irrelevant, I know, but still lots of fun (well, not for the folks involved in the divorce).
September 9th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I am so right there with you, effendi. The talking heads have absolved THE ONE however. Anderson Copper had Crowely, Toobin, and Gergen all agreeing that this is an evil Republican distraction to knock Obama off his game. He’s rattled and flustered by Palin’s sudden appearance on the scene say they. But then they don’t draw the obvious conclusion that this ratttled, flustered stutterer SHOULD NOT BE OUR PRESIDENT FOR PRECISELY THIS REASON. Do they think the Russians, Chinese, or various Arab or other states or state leaders will go easy on THE ONE? Dear God! This is just a campaign and the ingenue senator can’t even get it together to stay on message?
Obama is not just a menace to himself and his party. He’s a danger to the entire country.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
obama is no idiot. recall how in SC he talked baout being hoodwinked and bamboozled to whip up the black vote. very few whites understood what he was saying and was thought he was just riffing. Every single black voter knew what he meant.
Every single white wmoan knows exactly what Obama meant with his pig and smells like fish barbs. Obama does too. The man has no class. Say what you will about W but he would never attack any opponent in the vile ways that Obama has. W is a real man. Barry is just a little boy.
and lo and behold, according to Gallup the dems seem to be imploding in Congress as well.
The GOP now leads the generic congress ballot 50-45 after trailing earlier in the summer 52-42, a 15 pt swing.
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/31713/marked_shift_in_us_congressional_race/
How awesome would it be to send Pelosi packing?
September 10th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Obama’s spiritual mentor and the man who brought him to Jesus. The chief palyer on his religion cmte. Running out on his wife to sleep with a married woman 30 yrs younger.
And a white woman no less. I wonder if the NYT will accuse Wright of playing the race card?
Is Obama trying to make a play for Bill’s support?
September 10th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Dude. Thank you for the link!
September 10th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Biden is lucky that this happened and no one is talking about him asking a guy in a wheelchair to stand up and then saying that he’s new so he deserves some slack.
I thought Biden was the one with all the experience
September 10th, 2008 at 12:16 am
#39… Here’s what I don’t get though. When Obama talked about being hoodwinked and bamboozled, the point was to appeal to black voters, which would help him win in South Carolina. (And he did end up doing very well there.) Now he’s making comments that could easily be viewed as crude and sexist. That’s NOT going to help him with the white female voting bloc. So, in South Carolina you had Obama perhaps slyly playing the race card to appeal to black voters… But if he’s trying to go out of his way to offend female voters, there’s no conclusion to be drawn other than that he’s a monumental fool.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:18 am
“I can’t even remember what McCain’s health plan is from last year at this point.”
I think McCain’s health plan is DON’T DIE BEFORE SARAH IS READY!
September 10th, 2008 at 12:23 am
You just asked the million dollar question. WTF did Obama intend? Joking aside, the man is no fool.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:24 am
btw, remember those folks who’d post here saying Palin was bad pick because no one knows who she is and McCain would have to introduce her to the country and he wouldnt have the time?
Oops
September 10th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Obama didnt intend anything. He’s rattled. He’s not thinking clearly. When you start stressing and getting off your plan, you make mistakes.
It’s like when a QB is under heavy pressure from the blitz all game and getting hit on every play…and then he throws it right in to the zone because he’s hearing the footsteps and getting happy feet.
And before he knows it the other team took it to the house and is dancing in the end zone
September 10th, 2008 at 12:29 am
#45… Right. On the one hand, there’s no question he’s a bright guy. But it’s really hard to come up with an explanation for this sorta thing. The attacks on Palin just keep backfiring. And making any sort of remark that can be construed as sexist or racist is always going to backfire. So, what’s he trying to do?? Maybe it’s some mad, brilliant scheme on his part that we’re too dumb to catch onto just yet… Maybe.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:30 am
A most appropriate analogy.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:35 am
In a way it’s like the Super Bowl this year
The Pats were heavy favorites, couldn’t lose, the best team ever. Obama
The Giants were underdogs, but workmanlike, a solid running game and a ferocious pass rush. McCain
They went after Brady from the opening kickoff. Never let him get comfortable. Always made sure to hit him. The celeb ads, the town hall debates, Wright, Ayers, more Wright, Bittergate, etc…
Kept the game close.
NE pulled ahead with the TD to Moss and thought it was over. The dem convention and Obama’s speech and Billary’s speeches
Then, out of nowhere in the most amazing play in NFL history, some guy no one ever heard of named David Tyree catches a hail mary from Eli Manning under pressure on 4th and 15 against his helmet and everyone in Boston fell silent. I think we know who Manning and Tyree are in this scenario.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:47 am
I’m digging the football references. Especially if your analogy holds through election day!
September 10th, 2008 at 12:47 am
the Gallup congress poll is the biggest story of the summer.
If there is really a 5 pt lead for the GOP and a 15 pt swing since June, just, wow.
Just remember another Republican who began their career as a sportscaster in a small town, and rose to fame as governor of a large western state and from delivering a speech on behalf of an old white Senator from Arizona.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Who are you, dude? If you have a blog or something I would like the feed. I really like the way you write and the things you have to say.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:51 am
“old white Senator from Arizona”
Goldwater = 55 = not old
September 10th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Goldwater was an old white guy from AZ. 55 or not, the man looked old.
also, the NYT is freaking
MoDo calls Palin a low class call girl and a hooker with a heart gold. She’s just jealous Palin is better looking, more stylish, has kids, and actually has a hunky guy who satisfies her while Maureen has to write books about how she cant get dates because men are afraid of her dazzling intellect.
Tom Friedman is sringing the alarm. Says Obama doesnt get it and doesnt connect with folks on a gut level.
keep it up folks.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Feminist icon Camille Paglia tears Obama a new one:
Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.
As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach
After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.
Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
a great column
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/print.html
September 10th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Hi Jason, Check out this disturbing video/documentary called “We Will Not Be Silenced.” I found it through a comment over at http://www.noquarter.net. A pro-Hillary, anti-Obama, now pro-McCain/Palin site founded and authored by Democrats.
http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/contact.htm
September 10th, 2008 at 6:06 am
So much for all you guys saying McCain should have picked his VP before Obama lol.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:08 am
McCain firing back on the ‘lipstick’… Wow! “Ready to Smear: Yes”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZd_Y_D-RaA
September 10th, 2008 at 8:01 am
How about let’s make John McCain tell the Truth for once. He used the lipstick on a pig quote on Hillary Clinton. He has had Karl Rove on his campaign for a very long time and his advisors are Neocon/Rovian thugs. His campaign manager is Rick Davis, a lobbyist who helped bring us the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disaster that his campaign wrote so scathingly about over in the NYTimes op ed this week end. Phil Graham is his top finance advisor and the author of the Enron Loophole. His ENTIRE top campaign advisory staff is Chocked FULL of Washington lobbyists and yet he is running on a ticket that he’s going to CHANGE Washington and cut pork????????? How on Earth does any of that make sense?
He has hired the people responsible for the misery of Americans to advise and RUN his campaign and now he is running as the CHANGE candidate?????
John McCain is the biggest liar in a field of consumate liars. He needs to change his campaign slogan from Country first to ANYTHING TO WIN… and we do mean anything…… DISGRACEFUL
September 10th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Debbie -
Should we talk about ‘friends’ of the candidates?
McCain
– some lobbyists
– military vets
Obama
– domestic terrorist William Ayers, or if you prefer “a local english professor”
– radical ‘hate white America’ pastor Jeremiah Wright, or if you prefer “Obama’s spiritual advisor”
– soon to be corrupted convict Tony Rezko, or if you prefer “a friendly mentor”
– disgraced Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, or if you prefer “I’m grateful to call him a friend and a colleague”
– ACORN
and on and on…
Sure, I say we go there…
September 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
debbie,
I love Roe. Too many paople looking for the rhetorical cheap shots than appreciating the guys immense knowledge and abilities.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
debbie,
I love Rove. Too many people looking for the rhetorical cheap shots than appreciating the guys immense knowledge and abilities.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
62.
Roe=Rove….whoops!
September 10th, 2008 at 9:57 am
If you look at the people he was talking to and his face as he said the line, they understood what he was getting at. As for recent embrace of the “change” theme, I am still waiting to here what Barack Obama means by “change”. All I have heard is that he will be a change from the last 8 years and from President George Bush, and the last time I check he is not running against President Bush or Gov. Palin he is running against Sen. McCain. One last thing, when this line has been used in the pass it was use to describe a program or a policy, Sen. Obama was using to describe his opponents. He used the first part to describe Gov. Palin, “You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. and the second part to describe Sen. McCain “wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still going to stink after 8 years”.