I wanted to avoid writing on this stupid “lipstick on a pig†flap. However as I found myself posting comments on blogs and news articles, I became ensnared in the diversion and decided to cleanse myself from the mud by reporting on a good old fashioned case of muck-raking: the growing scandal within the Department of the Interior which involves loads of sex, drugs and bribes. They don’t get any hotter than this! And here you thought I was going to be wholesome! Bare with me though, as this is no Lewinski-Gate (or whatever they call that pointless scandal), this cuts right through to a den of power and corruption that is costing the taxpayers billions, while the Bush Administration indulges in drugs and orgies! You couldn’t make this stuff up because, no one would believe you!
First, the Lipstick Diversion, see, it even diverts this article!
I’m sure you’ve been tuned into this whole diversion which kicked off when Obama described McCain’s economic plans as being the same policies as Bush. He referred to it with the classic “you can put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig†bit, you know, the same one John McCain used to describe Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the same one used by Dick Cheney to describe John Kerry. Somehow, however, the McCain camp has since purchased all political usage of the term “lipstick†since Sarah Palin, McCain’s VP nominee, made this over-hyped speech about how she’s not a politician, describing herself as a hockey mom so vicious, that the only difference between her and a pitbull is the lipstick. It was a stupid speech in the first place, yet the media loves a good theme and they repeated it ad nausea.
So a mere two weeks later, Obama mentions the word lipstick in the same sentence as a pig. Uh Oh! That means Obama is a sexist, racist, Muslim terrorist sympathizer who is picking on the poor, poor, poor Sarah Palin, defenseless flower of a woman who is the target of smear attack after smear attack from the Liberal Media and the Far-Left “Liberals†who conspire to hurt this rational, down-to-earth, mother of 5 or whatever… so much for pitbull!
The charge was fired within an hour of Obama’s speech and left mainly to the surrogates while Palin and McCain bantered on through battleground states about how Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere, ironically, after she was a big proponent of it, or her blatent use of earmark spending in her tiny little town of Wasila, population under 10,000. Enough money to spend $3,000 on every resident! She also rambled on about putting that stupid plane on Ebay, which was unsold, so she unloaded it on an airline company at a loss (smart money my ass). While McCain never strayed more than 5 feet from Palin, he too attempted to get in a few sound bytes before the cameras turned off, only interested in Palin. Poor old fool, never realized that VP candidates rarely have any lasting impact on an election.
McCain’s people stepped up the rhetoric to full throttle: outright charges of sexism, demands of an apology, national TV ads and a full team of tired old lapdog pundits like Rash Limbaugh who, despite his infamous calling of feminists “femi-nazis†he suddenly had a gust of sympathy toward the plight of women. Same thing resonated from born again pundit (and potential future jail bird) Karl Rove, among the other hate squads.
It was the kind of Fascist attack we have come to expect from the whacko Right and their increasingly desperate diversion strategy. They talk and talk and never shut the hell up about anything, that is, except the issues. Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, they have used it all and are using it now. John Kerry would have likely fumbled around, like he did on Swift Boat and his accidental joke malfunction 2 years back. Would Obama roll over and look pathetic too? Nope!
Obama fired back hard, slamming the McCain squad with a remarkable line: “I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phoney outrage and swift-boat politics.â€
The fiasco played out through the news cycle, the blogosphere the punditry pits and the American people’s absolutely dumbfounded brains. One clear answer began to bubble up to the surface: This is beyond stupidity and an enormous waste of time!
Obama last night then went on Letterman and called this “silly season†politics, making the whole thing into a joke that has the McCain camp in a real bind. They drew a line in the sand with lipstick, as one reporter pointed out, and Obama stepped over it and laughed at them. Now what?
The media too was tough on this, never afraid to call it a diversion or mud slinging, or new low depths of Presidential politics. The NBC nightly news, their political commentator Dowd said that McCain is clearly trying to change the story from the issues, which are clearly moving against McCain’s hopes. CBS demanded that YouTube take down the McCain Commercial that used a quote of Katie Couric and her likeness, YouTube complied. The commercial however, which depicts the media and the “far left†as wolves, circling poor, defenseless little ol’ hockey mom Sarah Palin, is still available for viewing in a Democratic Party commercial that shows McCain’s ad, side by side to President Bush’s 2004 wolf commercial (remember the one where the wolves were the terrorists and it freaked people out?).
Looks like McCain’s worsening relationship with the media is beginning to cause him harm. Obama has beat them on this issue, and now, Palin’s honeymoon period is officially over. The momentum has clearly been checked and just in time to see McCain’s high water mark begin to recede, or at least it looks that way.
The American People too, are not amused by this McCain tactic. Every article I read was followed by hundreds of comments that said as much. Every so often some idiot came in and attacked Obama, or one of McCain’s female supporters came in and made a plea to all women. Clearly, sexism is not in play here when the right wingers, who attacked Hillary in the Fall, Winter and Spring as being whinny for using the sexism argument are now using the same dam argument! What outrage!
I had to post comments of my own on some of these articles:
In response to Obama’s Letterman interview:
“Right on! Hit em hard! These lying, cheating, two-faced hypocrites have gotten away with this below-the-belt BS for too long. It’s time to use THEIR strengths against THEM, just as Karl ” the criminal Rove has done to numerous opponents including John Kerry.
Republicans always call their opponents exactly what they hate the most: themselves and they have proven it so many times, it’s scary. They hate Gays? Turns out the loudest in the pack were gay. They call Liberals elite? These guys ARE the inner circle of American wealth and power (doesn’t get any more elite than that! Weak on defense? Uhm, 8 years of Bush has made us incredibly unpopular and militarily weak. Draft Dodgers? Most Republicans haven’t even served. It goes on and on and on.
I agree with Obama, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.â€
In response to an article citing the potential for a backfire:
“Obama has clearly won the day and checked Palin-o-mania with a sad wake up call to the McCain camp: the issues. While McBush and the phony-fem-nominan tour the country and talk about the Bridge to Nowhere she was for, before she was against it, they sent their minions out to swift boat Obama. TOTAL BACKFIRE! The American people are smarter than the pathetic low-intelligence campaign the Rovian faction is waging.
The water level has crested and as McCain begins to slide backward, we can look forward to a new and rational President in Obama that will bring us out of the dark age of Bush.â€
My comments were much like many that I saw as well. It appears Americans may actually feel their intelligence was insulted. It’s too bad it took so many Americans to wake up, we could have avoided so many horrible Bush blunders from Iraq to the economy. Speaking of which, I promised you one more.
The lipstick story came on a slow news cycle, which will probably be swallowed up, by the new growing sex scandal in the Department of the Interior. It’s the kind of stuff that can make the Nightly World News, the BBC, all the major respectable papers and journalists, while still having lasting legs on Extra, Excess Hollywood and even the lowest of the low, TMZ,
The media loves a good sex scandal, and they love a good drug scandal, and they love a good case of government corruption (that is, when it is easily understood, like the Republican Bribery scandals in ’05, ’06) , this story has them all rolled into one with one more significant factor: it ties into gas prices.
Yes, oil companies, turns out, have had their hooks into the Department of Interior for years, however the past 7, under the leadership of that statue of moral integrity, George W. Bush have seen criminal activities. From 2002 to 2006, energy company workers were involved in scandalous affairs, sexual favors, gave lavish gifts and outright bribes, even illicit drugs to Department of the Interior employees who were responsible for overseeing the Federal land being used for oil drilling!
As you pump your 4$ gas into your car, just remember that you’re not the only one who got screwed in the process. At least someone got to enjoy it!
On Bush’s watch, almost every single branch of the bureaucracy has faltered.
• Homeland Security and FEMA in New Orleans
• Gonzo Gonzalez and the Department of Justice in complete disarray
• The Department of Transportation not paying out for highway projects (like the collapsed bridge, remember?)
• Department of Education and No Child Left Behind (a total failure)
• EPA’s mass resignations in the face of Bush’s refusal to believe in Global Warming, oh and their millions of legal fees spent to keep states from deciding auto emissions.
• The CIA, FBI, NSA, with illegal wiretapping, faulty evidence of WMD’s in Iraq and after 7 years, no Osama bin Laden,
• The Department of Veterans Affairs with appalling conditions in hospitals like Walter Reed for taking care of our nation’s bravest
• Even the U.S. Military, the largest of all the bureaucracies, has been stretched too thin, been poorly equipped, forced into a war the top brass did not agree with and damaged the recruitment rolls for at least a decade.
Now the Department of the Interior caught in a sex, drugs and money for Oil trading program on top of the BIA scandal a few years back. That’s not even all of them, it’s just the one’s off the top of my head. With a record like this of things we know BEFORE Bush has even left office, we can only imagine what will come out over the next 50 years. I’d put my money on scandal after scandal that will undoubtedly proclaim Bush the worst President in our history.
Now McBush, I mean McCain has surrounded himself with the same minions that made Bush what he is today. How exactly is McCain going to bring about change?
This will likely and hopefully tie McCain once and for all with a tidy little bow to Bush and his disastrous 8 years in office. Are you better off?