The political season is upon us, and people get hung up on the goofiest things. Like jokes.
Sarah Palin jested about hockey moms and pit bulls, the biggest difference between them being, she says, “lipstick.”
Then Barack Obama fought back, attacking the McCain-Palin ticket and Republican policy in general with another such comparison: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”
And, it turns out that them’s fightin’ words, because, well, Mrs. Palin is thought to “own” the word “lipstick,” and, some said, Obama had just called her a pig.
No he didn’t. If one has to deconstruct the whole fracas into symbols, Palin would be the lipstick, McCain the pig.
Of course, Obama was really talking about policies. But which policies of John McCain was Obama complaining about, which were . . . porcine?
How about McCain’s best issue, pork itself? Unfortunately for him, Sarah Palin has been too pork-receptive in her days as an Alaskan politician. McCain has resisted pork. He’s not made requesting earmarks part of his job. Obama, on the other hand, though demanding that all pork requests be put up transparently, with full disclosure, is known to ask for quite a lot. In fact, nearly a million dollars for every day he’s been in office.
It’s a pity that in all this talk of lipstick-wearing pigs, the real pork issue gets lost. No joke.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.