Lipstick on a Pig

Politico.com

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "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 crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

I don't think there's any doubt that this wasn't intentional. Had Obama thought about it for half a second, he would have realized that lipstick, pig and Palin all in the same paragraph equals big trouble. Trouble he doesn't need right now. Bottom line is that there are certain phrases and words that he can't use now, and lipstick is probably one of them. He just can't risk losing any women over this or having another bad news day.

On the other hand, the McCain campaign is clearly being cynical as they jump all over this. They can't really believe McCain is this stupid? Er, well, maybe they do. They certainly moved fast getting Jane Swift to demand an apology.

UPDATE

This is interesting. Soren Dayton at Redstate and the "losing his bearings" and "taking out the claws" kerfuffle and wonders if this isn't happening a little too often with Obama:

Yesterday he said that John McCain was "losing his bearings", an unsubtle attack on McCain's age. I'll get to the McCain campaign's response. But first, I want to point remind you of one of the great un(der)reported stories of the Democratic Primary, Barack Obama's sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Jake Tapper first noted this when Obama said that Hillary was "taking out the claws." At the same time he noted that Obama would use "[l]anguage such as 'when she's feeling down' 'periodically' she 'launches attacks.'" Tapper noted that a number of female reporters and bloggers picked up on this. Later Obama complained that Hillary was "throwing the China" at him. Again, Tapper heard the dog whistle. Tapper noted that this "feeds into the 'harridan' caricature of Clinton."