LEBANON, Va - Democrat Barack Obama enjoys poking fun at his Republican opponents and their claims to being “agents of change.”
But Obama’s comments at a town-hall meeting in southwestern Virginia may have been misinte
rpreted by the audience.
“You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered and yelled and eventually got to their feet.
“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 audience, which had a particularly strong reaction whenever Obama mentioned Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, appeared to enjoy the “lipstick” comment the most.
When Palin gave her acceptance speech at the Republican convention in St. Paul she joked about being a hockey mom, saying the only difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom was lipstick.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
Photo credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook. Obama greets audience during campaign stop in Flint, Michigan, Sept. 8, 2008.
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Dick Cheney used exactly the same metaphor (in Hawaii) the night Kerry lost in 2004. See YouTube.
McCain also used the lipstick on a pig metaphor.
Well done Obama. Fair play my son as they say in soccer.
Keep em coming!
- Posted by Timothy Mortonwow…really disappointed in Obama. I was really undecided, now I need to vote for McCain. When McCain used it, it referred to the Hillary’s healthcare plan, when Obama used it is was obviously equating Palin with a pig and a fish, that is really insulting to me and women. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT!
- Posted by VictoriaLet’s call a “spade a spade” (another old saying) Of course he meant it as a jibe towards Palin. I can not vote for someone this “unaware” and “unpresidential”. This poor choice of words will cost Obama millions of women’s votes over the next few days. Hillary should start warming up for 2012. I was for Hillary in the primary but I’m switching to PALIN/mccain after this stupid comment!
- Posted by SamanthaThis is sad reporting. The comment was taken out of context — Obama wasn’t talking about Palin at all! He was talking about how the McCain team previously was talking about experience, experience, experience but now has switched to talking about change, change, change — yet not stating what kind of change they have in mind. That they cannot tout change when their program so closely aligns with the current Bush program. THAT was the pig getting the lipstick.
This is going to get totally out of hand just because people don’t want to take the time to do a little research.
- Posted by SharmynForget about lipstick. Today the CBO released estimates of how much red INK each candidate’s economic plan would run up in 4 years (assuming that we’ll continue to find willing lenders):
- Posted by stevoMcSame -$5T and Oblabla -$3.5T
They both should start thinking about how many battalions need to be brought HOME, rather than how many they’d like to redeploy elsewhere; how much more welfare we can afford to let big pharma and big farming suck up; and how many more banks and auto companies we can afford to bail out.
Republican or Democrat, lipstick or counterfeit cash: it’s still a pig.
JOE BIDEN SAID, “A WOMAN ON THE TICKET IS A STEP ‘BACK’ FOR WOMEN”???? IS HE NUTS?
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA HAS SENT A SMALL ARMY OF 30 LAWYERS AND INVESTIGATORS TO ALASKA TO “VET” GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN.
HAD THE DNC AND BIASED MEDIA PROPERLY “VETTED” OBAMA — HILLARY WOULD BE THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE.
WHY IS OBAMA ATTACKING HIS OPPONENT’S #2 PERSON ON THE TICKET? SHE’S NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. JOHN McCAIN IS.
WHY IS OBAMA ATTACKING PRESIDENT BUSH? HE’S NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. JOHN McCAIN IS.
YOU CAN SEND AN “IDIOT” TO HARVARD — BUT HE’S STILL AN “IDIOT”!
I’M VOTING FOR THE HONORABLE JOHN S. McCAIN IN NOVEMBER!
- Posted by OBAMA-bin-BIDEN! HA!Returning a gesture in kind. Well done. And use a phrase McCain’s used against Hillary’s plans too! Smart move. Of course they wouldnt like it. Nobody likes their own game plan used against them.
- Posted by SCYou Republicans are such w-h-i-n-e-r-s! Can dish it out but you sure can’t take it!
- Posted by George W.Way to go Obama!! There really isnt getting around the fact that republicans & sadly, too many people, do not understand government & policy differences. They only ooh-and-ahh at nasty politics… thats all they can comprehend. So if you want to win elections, you have to get their attention. Its a game the repubs have mastered. YOu’ve got to beat them at their own game
- Posted by ALanWe are all praying on this election that OBAMA gets into office.
- Posted by jacqq jonesDon Stevens,
You do know that Biden and Obamassiah are in the Senate, not Congress, right? Another informed Obama supporter.
Since when is being a community organizer (whatever that is, no one seems to know) and voting with your party 97% of the time in the SENATE national experience. This guy hasn’t been in charge of anything, including his own household, I’m guessing.
Signed,
- Posted by richardClinging to my gun and religion.
CORRECTION ON EARLIER POST
Again, that was an ALLEGED affair with her husband’s business partner that was/is being investigated by the National Inquirer. This same media broke the Edwards story, and is strongly standing by this news story. The Edwards affair was true.
Any time you have that many folks buzzing about the same thing, and so many things all pointing north, all smelling like negative sacks of dirt, some of the buzz is bound to be correct and accurate. All of the folks ain’t wrong. Again, this is the white house. The white house has always been about Image, always has and always will be.. And whether you will admit it, or LIKE IT OR NOT, or are willing to SEE it as it really is without the sheep’s wool being pulled over your head by a pit bull acting like a wolf, IMAGE MATTERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE OVAL OFFICE. IT DOES. When did it not? That is why her daughter was being pressured to get married, according to reports. And I am sure there is more to be revealed. If McCain had chosen some one else with more experience and a higher caliber of person, that might have made a difference with my Undecided friends and church members and Republican family members. But when they made this choice, which could be more WRONG… WE ALL WENT DEMOCRATS faster than a pit dog farts!
This office as Vice President is a position that this woman doesn’t have a clue about what the duties are and she was taped stating that exact fact. Not a clue!!! This is lunacy to think she was a prime choice. Cheerleaders are a dime a dozen. They don’t talk to heads of state, and make major national decisions. Of all the Republican women his camp could have selected, they selected her????? It was a huge mistakes on so many levels. She has too many bad bags of baggage. Too many! That is my opinion, that is my comment and that is the sentiment of everyone I know and have talked to regarding this race. They are not impressed with Palin, never was impressed and never can be. She is no Hillary, and could never come close! What she is … is WRONG!!! Period!
- Posted by jacqq jonesWoohoo.
I am still voting for Obama and Biden.
- Posted by AVIVI would love to see the candidates answer questions.. ‘off the cuff’, as in Palin & Biden each providing answers.. as well as see Obama & McCain do likewise.
I can remember seeing JFK & Nixon doing that. I now see a more than passing resemblance between 1960 & 2008. Both in as to how the repub’s have shoved science & education.. and modern.. in favor of a return to.. old.. old fashioned. And so too with the candidates Obama & McCain.
No wonder the repub’s try (always) to repress.. progress. Being liberal is not bad. I say being ignorant & dumbed-down is. Fogiesm. Anti-science. Deny logic, deny proven science.. all for..?? As usual, profit.
America;ie: the United States, is only about 4-4.5% of the worlds population. How may Americans are aware of the REAL problems around the world..??
- Posted by RussYou can put lipstick on a bongo but it’s still Barack.
- Posted by jdAs Obama recently said, “Let’s not play games here.” Anybody with half a brain knows he was referring to Sarah Palin with his pig comment. Certainly his partisan crowd “got it” - evidenced by their spontaneous glee. Wrap it up any way you want and it still stinks. What happened to his previous airs that he planned on being a gentler, more decent type of politician? Nice words when you’re running away with things but once you start running scared it’s time to get in the gutter. Doesn’t sound like change to me.
- Posted by mike bJust more hypocrisy by Obama. He didn’t like Palin questioning his mysterious work as “community organizer”, a time that Obama reportedly befriended and started supporting Jeremiah Wright and his work, a man who made unsubstantiated and non-evidentiary claims that “the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color”, and implied “god damn America” because America is a country filled with people who actually try to get along despite skin color, race, religion, gender and other physical attributes and the consequential frustrations and strife that comes from those pursuits.
Obama is no stranger to these types of attacks either.
Like, during the democratic primary when Obama was questioned about some analytical downsides of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and he said directly to the people on a CNN interview that he wasn’t going to do what Hillary was doing, in talking about what an opponent can’t do but rather what he can do. The previous two weeks he was one televised speech after another about how polarizing Hillary is, how she would divide the country and a month or two earlier how she was disrespectful to Martin Luther King for giving a short historical time-line on the political perspective of the civil rights legislation. Then he has the nerve to come on CNN and lie directly to the people saying he isn’t running that type of campaign implying people are that stupid?
Like, another example of oh so many manipulations, those Obama racial manipulations that he used to attack Hillary Clinton when she was giving a speech seemingly trying to connect with voters who have a darker skin color when she said that it took a president to pass the civil rights legislation several decades ago that people like Martin Luther King fought to implement and she went on to imply that she would work for people who have a darker skin color in the same ways toward racial equality if she was elected president.
Obama manipulated that situation at a time when he was polling very poorly among those who CNN referred to as “black” voters. Obama lied, bypassed the English language dictionary that defines the words Hillary used and made up his own manipulative definition terms of the words Hillary Clinton used so Obama could divide people based on skin color by attacking someone who happens to have another skin color and the Obama campaign put out rhetoric that what Hillary said was racist and discriminatory and Obama himself said it was disrespectful of Martin Luther King.
Then comes out Obama is the one that was attending a church that purveys racially discriminatory and racially hate-filled sermons. Then he has the nerve to go on tv and lecture us with this long talking-to about race relations?! A lecture he should have gave his Rev Wright mentor and his hate-filled church 20 years ago.
Too bad more people didn’t see his racial manipulations before it cost Hillary alot more votes up until the truth came out that Obama was the one consorting with racially discriminating members of the community. But then he gave his hypocritical lecture about race relations and after that alot more people were ready to forget and jump in line and believe again in “the one” liar.
Stop letting this guy get away with such blatant manipulations, lies and fallacies. Stop racial discrimination. No matter what color skin a a person who discriminates has or what color skin a person who is discriminated against has, discrimination based on skin color or race is WRONG! Civil rights is not a word to define “white” rights or “black” rights. It is EQUAL rights.
No matter what color skin a person has or what gender a person happens to be, lying, manipulating and using fallacies to attack others and for personal gain is WRONG!
- Posted by CJSounds like Obama would be at home touring with Russell Brand the famed Mtv VMA host, they both do not seem to understand what is offensive to Americans. That was a joke he should have told in Germany or maybe the U.K. I guess Mr. Clean Campaign is a thing of the past. I hate seeing a grown man resort to calling an opposing V.P. candidate and her following of “hockey moms” PIGS!!! I am now disgusted - I thought he would be a little more cool under pressure, but as it turns out he goes off the deep end the 1st time he is behind in the polls… PIGS? PIGS? Way to embarrass the democrat party yet again, name calling is for children - maybe you are not ready for the Presidency. This marks the moment that you have become a has-been! Maybe Brand will allow you to lay low at his “flat” for a while??? You should have just made fun of virgins and the chastity & abstinence of a boy band. IDIOT!
- Posted by Ed AmmonThe affair is an alleged affair with her husband’s business partner who recently sealed his divorce records. This was a story that was being investigated by the Inquirer that I previously posted. But investigate the circumstances Investigative Reporters… get busy!!!
- Posted by jacqq jonesLipstick on a pig is an old expression. It just means that you can’t take something bad and make it good with some minor, cosmetic modification. It had nothing to do with Sarah Palin’s gender. This country is really going nuts–the most egregious sorts of offense, like Palin charging per diems for living at home, or Obama calling himself a professor at the University of Chicago (he’s a lecturer). Looking back, we elected George H. W. Bush after his long career opposing the civil rights amendment in Texas and after his overt involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, and we elected George W. Bush for a second term after he immersed the country in a senseless (and unjust) war, donated our entire surplus to a handful of super-wealthy people, and informed the country that his actions were directed by God. In fact we re-elected Nixon after he promised to end the war during his first campaign, then dramatically expanded it during his first term. Ironically, we elected him for a second term because he promised to end the war–again. American people are not dumb, and they have tremendous spirit and generally an unparalleled sense of fairness and equality (on average). But–in my view–they’ve spent so many years being fed sensational crap by the media, they no longer have much sense of what is important and what is hype.
- Posted by David Bradley