In the past week, Republicans have made much noise about Obama’s comments on administration policies when he used the phrase “lipstick on a pig”. They are “offended” by Obama’s “clearly sexist” references to Sarah Palin comparing her to a pig. Excuse me?! What is this, a junior high school student council contest?
It will eventually dawn on the mainstream pundits that these “offended” parties are demonstrating, for all the world to see, why the U.S. has a way to go before we get past gender as part of the political calculus. Ideology aside, Hillary Clinton was, in many ways, the ideal type of woman candidate. The gender issue would crop up from time to time. But for two years she has been in the spotlight getting grilled on her political views and her experience. She has been as tough as (probably tougher than) many presidential candidates. And her political clout is not in question by anybody.
Sarah Palin has not had the seasoning that Clinton has, though she seems to be every bit as tough. Her looks and her youth and her gender have apparently triggered that primal limbic reflex that says young, pretty women are delicate and need to be protected. I would think that Palin herself would find that problematic and seek to minimize that reaction.
We are looking at electing these people to the most influential leadership positions in the world. Sarah Palin is an unknown, untested, unproven quantity at the national level. Anybody in that situation who is placed into the brightest spotlight possible is going to be exposed to a lot of scrutiny in a very short period of time. I think Obama’s comments may have cleverly echoed Palin’s own lipstick comments. But the context of his comments were consistent with the traditional use of that phrase, oft quoted by many politicians including McCain.
It is a real stretch to turn Obama’s comments into a personal attack on Palin. But, worse, you have to buy into a certain mindset to make the argument. Obama was referring to Bush policies, and by extension, McCain’s. Yet, the furor is that somehow, the pretty woman was being targeted and called a pig. There is no way this would have ever been an issue if the VP candidate were male. Palin herself made the phrase more accessible by her humorous “lipstick on a bulldog” comment. Obama simply returned the phrase to the more relevant realm of policy, not personality.
