Smearing off mud, lipstick

This tempest in a teapot over whether Sarah Palin was called a pig shows just how low politics has gone.

The charges and countercharges are exasperating.

Once again, Southwest Virginia is the site of news-making politics. It was in Lebanon on Sept. 9 that Barack Obama criticized the Republican ticket’s claim to be an engine for change and reform as no more effective than putting “lipstick on a pig.”

“It’s still a pig,” he said.
The comment came about a week after GOP vice presidential candidate Palin made her famous lipstick comment. What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? Lipstick, she said.

The comment got wide news play, with Republican adherents rejoicing and Democrats recoiling at the tough talk.
Now the Obama campaign professes to be shocked — shocked! — that anyone would interpret his remark as being directed offensively as Ms. Palin.
Mr. Obama might not have been deliberately calling her a pig, but it is disingenuous of him and his campaign to fault critics for making that connection.

The connection, in fact, leaps to the eye.

Mr. Obama says the resulting uproar is a “phony outrage.”
At its core, the outrage is real.
GOP handlers are deliberately fanning the flames, no doubt about that.

But, deliberately or accidentally, Mr. Obama gave them the tinder.