Pig-gate: any way you spin it, lipstick on a pig is politics as usual

[Dennis Baron]

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Pig-gate: any way you spin it, lipstick on a pig is politics as usual

When Barack Obama said of rival John McCain's economic plan, "You can
put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," Republicans loudly
complained that he was attacking vice presidential nominee Sarah
Palin, who had connected lipstick, hockey moms, and pit bulls in her
speech at the Republic Convention.

But lipstick on a pig is an insult used by Democrats and Republicans
alike, and it's been a political staple at least since 2004. The real
issue isn't whether Obama was insulting Palin, McCain's economics, or
both. Instead, the media circus that we might call pig-gate has become
an object lesson in how interpretation depends more on attempts to
control what words mean than on what their dictionary definitions say
they mean.

Democrats were likening McCain's economic proposals to "lipstick on a
pig" well before he chose Palin as his running mate.. . .John Edwards
and Dick Cheney likened their opponents' plans to putting lipstick on
a pig when they were running for vice president. . . .

John McCain himself used the "lipstick on a pig" comparison to
describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan in 2004 as well . . .

A sexist attack on Sen. Clinton? Maybe it was, especially if you
consider that John McCain's former press aide Torie Clarke, who also
served as Donald Rumsfeld's press secretary, wrote a primer
calledLipstick on a Pig in 2006 which advised politicians how to spin
their message while pretending not to. The book's subtitle, Winning in
the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game, suggests that Clarke
learned that game from mentors like McCain and Rumsfeld.



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____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

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