[quote]tom63 wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
With the audience clearly believing that the lipstick comment referred to a specific woman, then coming up with what-seems-to-me a novel parallel of you can wrap a fish in paper but it still stinks, this was not intended to play on some negative, misogynistic, anti-female-directed imagery?
I doubt he would dare in any way let it sound to a woman’s face like he even might be implying that she was like a fish that stinks.
But with the crowd that clearly strongly objected to Palin believing he was talking about her, and so cheering the lipstick/pig comment – thus obviously themselves NOT viewing it as just an old cliche – that’s the imagery he chose to follow up with.
Maybe the thinking required to come up with that parallel is why the slowdown in delivery that you noted.
…
I do think he thought it up on the spot to meet the situation of the crowd being so satisfied with thinking the lipstick/pig meant Palin and perhaps being hungry for another negative-image innuendo, which the “fish” “stinks” deal certainly accomplishes if taken to be another comment about a woman as the crowd took the preceding lipstick/pig.
To be fair Bill, didn’t he say old dead fish? I would think that refers to McCain in my eyes. No matter what , he was trying to be smart and got busted.[/quote]
It seems to me both from the delivery and the apparent-uniqueness of that parallel analogy that he thought it up on the spot.
It’s possible that his conscious intent was to follow up a reference to Palin (by using “lipstick” which she had just famously identified herself with) that got such screaming approval from the crowd with a novel McCain parallel to hit him too, and “old” does suggest that.
Though Obama at 47 may personally view women past 40 as being “old” and tend to use, or mentally use, expressions with “old” in them as a way of being further derogatory to such women. Possible. So it doesn’t rule out it being constructed to refer to Palin.
Back to the possibility that conscious intent was to now create an image of McCain as an old fish, how would “fish” and “stink” come to his mind from imagining McCain?
But if he is misogynistic and mentally himself had a really nasty picture of Palin, well there it is.
Anyway, two related points:
- While in an ideal world the best thing would be for an opposing candidate to ignore nastiness and other crap from the other side, in this case we know that the only way the media will bring to public attention an Obama action that could harm his image is if the other side does bring it up.
Then it’s a news story and they have to. Otherwise they’ll choose not to report.
But once that is done, let others bring it up if they want to.
- I’d take it as just typical nastiness such as you can find freshly posted on Daily Kos, Moveon.org, or Democratic Underground every single day.
We know that they love such stuff (and much worse, such as wishing cancer on those that disagree with them): that’s why the screaming approval of the crowd.
My objections are the hypocritical turnaround of Obama supporters at the time immediately taking at as being about Palin and screaming their approval, but then as soon as Obama starts taking heat for it, Obama supporters now insist it was obviously just an old cliche. That’s crap. Man up.
And secondly that Obama himself didn’t man up. He could have simply said
"It’s an old phrase I was going to use in any instance (if he was) and it’s true that I noticed at the time that, Governor Palin having just made famous her pitbull-lipstick line, that it could have sounded like I was meaning Governor Palin.
I went ahead anyway on the spur of the moment because I didn’t see where I really had to change my words, but obviously I should have found a different way to say it."
Or if he really did not intend it and actually wasn’t aware even at the very moment, then for example "I wasn’t referring to Governor Palin, but given that within the last few days her statement about hockey moms and lipstick had gotten so much play, I should have realized that my statement could easily have been taken to be a disrespectful reference to her and so I should have found a different way to say it.
I didn’t realize it at the time. I apologize for any offense that I unintentionally caused." That would have been class and would not have been taken as “weakness” by anyone, or at least not anyone reasonable.
Or something like those things. But no, not only did he not man up, but he came up with some weaseling along the lines of, “Well, if I had meant Governor Palin at all, though I didn’t, then it would have been only the lipstick that was Governor Palin while the pig was the McCain policies, but that’s hypothetical.” (Paraphrase.)
That’s I get out of this odd little story. Hypocrisy from his supporters and behavior from Obama that I just can’t call stand-up.