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• Wednesday, September 10, 2008 06:50 AM

  At best, an insensitive choice of words

  Before the pigsh*t hit the fan (i.e., the backlash), Democratic Underground users celebrated the implication that Palin was being likened to a sow, in a highly rated thread:

  http://www.correntewire.com/your_fellow_democrats

  So, I find it not such a stretch that Obama's live audience may have gleaned the same enjoyment out of the conflation of Palin and pig, whether it was intended or not.

  From a campaign whose surrogates thought "fairy tale," praise for LBJ, and images of sleeping white children were racist (and that a reference to RFK was an assassination wish or even threat), this shows a remarkably tin ear or worse.

  Was Obama unaware that the lipstick/pig metaphor might inflame concerns about sexism and misogyny, especially after Sarah Palin's widely publicized lipstick/pitbull joke?

  If he really is that ill-informed and/or insensitive, can someone get him an internet connection and show him Shakesville's Palin Sexism Watch?

  http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-sexism-watch-12.html

  In this context, wouldn't you think twice about invoking that particular imagery? Of course you would, because you're not stupid and not a misogynist. You also might not scratch your face with your middle finger in the same speech where you did a pantomime that likened your female, intraparty rival to dandruff. But, then again, you're not the leader of a new-politics progressive movement.

  —vastleft Read vastleft's other letters
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