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With the numerous letters to The Daily Sentinel written by Creighton Bricker, it is obvious he is quite intelligent and also politically savvy. Because of these qualities, it is surprising that he takes exception to the “lipstick on a pig” comment by Barack Obama, especially since this is a phrase common in the political arena and used by various politicians, several of them prominent Republicans quite familiar to Mr. Bricker. John McCain, Dick Cheney and Lynne Cheney have all uttered this metaphor in speeches.
It seems appropriate to remind Mr. Bricker that when John McCain used the phrase, he was criticizing Hillary Clinton’s position on health care. Should John McCain apologize for that?
Dick Cheney used the metaphor in November 2004 in Honolulu, again in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Zanesville, Ohio that same year in speeches about John Kerry’s record. Add to this that the vice president’s wife, Lynne Cheney, repeated the “lipstick on a pig” comment in Coraopolis, Pa., when commenting on John Kerry. Is it okay for the vice president, his wife and John McCain to make the “lipstick on a pig” comment but not others? Would Mr. Bricker also consider these individuals insensitive?
If Mr. Bricker had read the entire statement by Barack Obama, he would have noticed that the “lipstick on a pig” part was taken out of context and it would have been clear that the words referred to John McCain’s policies being similar to the policies of President Bush.
Mr. Obama’s entire statement was, “You can put lipstick on a pig. It is still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It is still going to stink after eight years.”
No doubt Mr. Bricker will continue to write his letters to the paper, which he should. However, it would be refreshing if he could display a little more fairness in his discourse.
NANCY MILLER
Grand Junction
3 Responses to “‘Lipstick’ metaphor used by many politicians”
Posted September 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Ms. Miller thinks that Obama is not intelligent enough to understand context.
Posted September 30th, 2008 at 10:37 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Surely Nancy Miller is saying that Mr. Bricker seems not to understand “context”
Posted October 5th, 2008 at 4:49 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
The phrase is very common, and I should have been more explicit when I said I knew the context was about the Bush administration and Senator McCain was more of the same. I knew that before watching the video. My point was that an intelligent/sensitive person would not purposely use that phrase mere days after the use by Sarah Palin in the hockey mom context. The crowd quite obviously took it as a dig, because in previous usage by Obama there was not that much crowd uproar. So, if, and only if, all was done on purpose, with context as an excuse, I would call him Machiavellian.
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