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I like a good political slip-up as much as the next guy, but I’m concerned that McCain’s campaign and supporters may spoil the stupidity of Obama’s latest gaffe by taking it too seriously.

In this clip from today, Obama appears to make a very crude reference to Sarah Palin’s “pitbull in lipstick” joke (no doubt, that’s how his own crowd took it):

My first reaction was that it was probably inadvertant, as the saying “put a pig in lipstick…” is quite old, Obama has used it before (so has McCain), and he could well have used that same phrasing again without harm if Palin had never made her now famous convention quip.

But this initially reasonable defense of Obama, especially as made here at The Atlantic, raises another question:

The McCain campaign has little respect for Obama, but they don’t think he is stupid. And the only way one can conclude that Obama meant to refer to Gov. Sarah Palin as a pig is to have concluded that Obama is as dumb as a doornail.

So if Obama didn’t mean to refer to Palin, and didn’t think about how it would sound in the current context, and didn’t have any staff who also thought the better of it, how much smarter than a doornail does that make them sound?

Regardless of the explanation, Camp Obama doesn’t come out of this as looking very bright. (It doesn’t help that his follow-up about an ‘old stinky fish’ could likewise be interpreted as a jibe at McCain.)

However, it is best in such squalid and trivial matters to let any bad impression set itself in the public consciousness as it will and leave it at that. Even at its worst, if Obama was intentionally attempting a backhanded insult, the only person such a sophomoric taunt could ultimately hurt is himself.

My guess is Palin has heard a lot worse and laughed. The over-aggressive media pursuit of any potential scandal has rallied a lot of support on her behalf, but that support will quickly fizzle if it starts to appear that McCain’s spinners are manufacturing outrage, or, worse, being overly sensitive.

McCain’s campaign should be above the indignity of demanding an apology… which, alas, they already have done. ‘Sticks and stones,’ please. The GOP should not play the party of hurt feelings. It’s gross, and undermines the strong Convention message which has so miraculously given the campaign a lifeline. Shrug it off.

Tags:   lipstick · Obama · Palin · pigNo Comments