Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he used this phrase. But he was NOT calling Palin a pig. He was just taking her "pitbull with lipstick" line (which hit a big chord) and giving it a twist. And he made a very good point along the way. More power to him.

Of course he knew that some people in the media would purposefully misconstrue his remark to imply that he called Palin a pig, but on a purely literal level that is patently false. The GOP's "uppity" remark is a lot more indefensible by comparison, at this word-association level.

On a deeper (lizard brain) level, Obama has now associated Palin with the term "pig in lipstick" (ecchh!) rather than "pitbull in lipstick" (you go, girl!). When the GOP does shit like that, all the Dems gasp and say "Oooh, that's clever".

I'd prefer to see Obama stay above the fray and let his surrogates handle this shit. Maybe Hillary should have delivered the line? Or Bill? But I guess Obama wanted to give it a big kick. Again, cool - that zesty youthful adrenalin will end up looking good come November 2nd.

I don't quite get where Obama's team is heading, but it's clear they are haunted by the ghost of Kerry '04, who miserably failed to take the fight over Iraq all the way to the wire. Obama's got game and he's gonna play these suckas. Yet again, cool. It's about time the Dems showed some spine. Maybe in 2009 he will stand up to AIPAC and the military-industrial complex too? We live in hope!

MSM journalists, particularly the DC strain ... are like a bunch of adolescent pre-frat-rats - they stroke their own hurt egos by infantile ridicule of their critics. ... Thus their only defense against well-argued and evidenced-based attacks is to respond to them with patronizing sarcasm, rather than to attempt to rationally refute the actual arguments made against them.

Of course it's not only the journos who follow this modus operandi. It's standard far for Bush administration officials too.

I just finished listening to an old taped interview (22MB MP3 link at my sig) with Jerome Hauer, who dismisses his critics as crazy conspiracy theorists while steadfastly refusing to answer any difficult questions.

For example, asked whether he told the White House to take Cipro on 9-11, he says "This is crazy! I was in New York!" What, did OBL bring down the US phone networks that day?

As an example of journalists meditating endlessly on their ethical rights and privileges, may I recommend Nicholas Kristof's recent mea culpa about publicly fingering Dr Stephen Hatfill as the anthrax killer? A quick "I was wrong" followed by a lengthy "oh but it's so hard" hand-wringing exercise.

Then there's Judy Miller and all the others who found it so hard to apologize for their WMD lies... I mean, talk about a responsibility to the public! A million Iraqis are dead because of those lies.

If you read the NYT story, Olbermann says that his criticism of 9-11 images during the RNC is what "restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights".

I've noticed a few commenters here saying KO initiated these discussions himself, but that's not apparently true.

Also BTW, I notice via E&P (link at sig) that Google is hoping to republish "billions of articles published during the past 244 years". For anyone who has been frustrated by news sites that block access to archived pay-per-view stories, that's good news.