Obama: “Lipstick on a Pig”

Today, at an Obama campaign rally in St. Louis, Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan attacked Sarah Palin when introducing Joe Biden, proclaiming:

“For all his tough talk [McCain] buckled to the right wing of his party in his choice. Picked someone with zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick,” he said.

Later in the day, at a campaign rally in Lebanon, Virginia, Obama said, “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. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

The partisan crowd roared and cheered at the reference, clearly seeing it as a slam on Governor Sarah Palin, something that Obama’s campaign staff–in full-fledged spin and damage-control mode–vocally denied.

The video is here:

Taken in context with the Obama campaign’s similar lipstick reference earlier in the day, it’s hard to not see this as something deliberate. And if it is not deliberate, but instead some sort of gaffe, then there is no reason not to apologize for any misunderstanding and move on.

As it stands, the lipstick reference by Obama (and at an earlier campaign rally) are added to a lengthy catalog of sexist and crass actions by the Obama campaign, whether against Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin or, earlier, against Senator Hillary Clinton. In one case, Obama’s crass sexism was targeted at a reporter that asked a question he did not want to answer.

Together, they paint a picture of an interesting pattern.

Take this ad screen shot (courtesy of NRO’s Media Blog):

(Read more after the leap)

Before that came the reporter that asked a question that Obama did not want to answer:

And before that the infamous “likeable enough” exchange with Senator Hillary Clinton (right before the New Hampshire Primary, where she beat him):

And the time that he flipped her the bird while talking about her at a campaign rally (after being thrashed by her in a debate the night before):

You sort of start to see a pattern of behavior in all of that, don’t you?

In a lot of the “bitter” lands of America, chivalry is not dead. Just because Barack Obama doesn’t practice it doesn’t mean that it isn’t alive and well for a lot of men (and women) and that some measure of decorum is expected as a part of the culture.

I don’t think this is such a huge deal as some are trying to make the incident; it was probably just another of Obama’s endless gaffes that happens whenever he is unable to be near a teleprompter.

I agree, however, with the folks at Hot Air. For a campaign that has repeatedly and viciously played the race card, first (and quite effectively) against Hillary Clinton and later (with rapid pushback and Obama retreat) against the McCain campaign, there’s something entertaining in seeing the Obamassiah and Biden repeatedly tripping over their own words and resulting in their own campaign being vulnerable to the gender card.

Irony is a delicious and wonderful thing.