"Lipstick on a Pig" (with video)

Al Giordano with video:

I really don't know if Obama's utterance of the phrase today was intended to turn the McCain campaign into the Clinton campaign circa first week of November 2007 - screeching the "gender card" in a way that overshoots - but that's what's happened.

Gotta hand it to Mike Huckabee. I saw him on Fox News where Sean Hannity - that great feminist hero - was in an uproar trying to get all his guests to charge sexism, and this is what Huckabee said:

HUCKABEE: "It's an old expression, and I'm going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin; he didn't reference her. If you take the two soundbites together, it may sound like it. But I've been a guy at the podium many times, and you say something that's maybe a part of an old joke and then somebody ties it in. So, I'm going to have to cut him slack."

On the other hand, had the O camp known that those lesbian separatists Hannity, Karl Rove, Tony Blankley, et al, would have bitten on the hook and launched into tirades of politically correct indignation of the very sort that turned many women and men off from the Clinton campaign, it might have been pure genius.

First of all, when it comes to gender, the word "pig" goes both ways: from "male chauvinist pig" to "Miss Piggy," the Muppet emblem for that feminine "inner beauty" not so pursued by magazine covers. Other than the use of the word as a sexist code for "ugly" it has absolutely no feminine gender connotation at all (and far more male gender connotation). Sorry to get all semiotic on y'all, but of all the sexist and misogynist crap that's been thrown at Governor Palin, "ugly" is not a word that anybody has used or even thought, certainly not those that determine who will be on magazine covers!

And so they're really misfiring, trying, first, to claim that Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was referring to Palin (even Huckabee wouldn't hunt that dog) and, second, trying to claim some kind of sexism. Oh gawd! Can they be that stupid?

Yes, they can! And you know why? The GOP's own tracking polls - you heard it here first - are not reflecting the size of the bounce that the national media tracking polls are claiming.

Then again, national media only contract out to pollsters willing to play the game and make it seem like a neck-and-neck contest even when it might not be. That's how to sell newspapers and boost ratings and prove their own relevance, after all.

But what do I know?

Consider this an open thread!

Update: Here's video from Obama's event this morning in Virginia, in which he gains the upper hand "running against the media" and lumping the McCain campaign in with it.

Well done!

Howie P.S.: Josh Marshall says,"Embrace It."

Barack Obama