The Noise. The Static.
“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin’s joke. “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”
Considering the false outrage directed at a bemusing joke and old antiquated idiom, a nod to Palin’s badly delivered antiquated joke of aw-shucks folksiness, and a reference to John McCain (and POLICIES) as a pig, not Sarah Palin (he is the one at the top of the ticket, you understand; and it has been culturally agreed on that Ms. Palin is attractive) — I am reminded of that line John McCain used in his sedated nominating speech as Code Pink protesters were being carted away:
“Don’t be diverted by the ground noise and the static.”
But, alas, we all are. Obama delivered a speech on education, one of those five pointers which unveil, frankly not so much a Grand Vision for America but a Vision nonetheless. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin delivered a whopper of a statement regarding the Fannie Mae and Bernie Mac (er… I mean, Freddie Mac) bailout, which shows the disarming cluelessness on what it was that just happened. The problem is this fact will pass into the ether for “Joe Six-Pack” and — what’s the female equivalent of “Joe Six Pack” — as opposed to watching these theatricl aspects of this political race… and planning to get Palin’s haircut.
The “Truthiness” is in danger of falling right in place for the narrative, past the Truth. McCain has called Obama out for earmarks, as an offense against Obama’s charge against Palin’s — she’s from goddamned Alaska, people! — Pork Barrel attachments, as mayor of Wasilla and as Governor of Alaska. The issue is this the premise of the Palin candidacy — except it is the lie which is coating some basic Cultural Identity Politics of “Moose-hunter and Mother.”  McCain demands Obama to remove that speck from his eye before McCain will remove that log out of his eye.
That’s a play off a biblical reference.
Meantime I hear Obama state “They must think the American people are stupid” and “The American people are not that stupid.” The ghost of Adlai Stevenson, and “Let’s talk sense to the American People” hangs in the air right about now. Not to get into the arena of “Theater Review” too much, and Obama does need to follow a sort of guided instinct at this point — he is picking up on the Art of Sarcasm, but there may just be not quite enough declarative sentences.
As a matter of further controversy in some feigned outrage; Dear RNC: I think that Tom Toles, partisan to Obama’s direction, doesn’t much mind that Obama stole his line. I further think that Obama’s citation on the Keith Olbermann shows just how clunky it is to note the Toles cartoon, hence my advice to Obama is to keep using that line and to go ahead and leave out the reference to Toles. All of which misses the basic truth of that line.