The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Well, do we all feel better now, as American voters?

Has the discourse of the political campaign gone where you want it to go?

A friend of mine said today “I haven’t felt this angry at the campaign [meaning the race in general] since Hillary Clinton made the RFK assassination gaffe.”

I’ve said all I wanted to say on the whole stupid “lipstick on a pig” topic here & here, but there’s one thing I’d like to add.

If I had a nickel for every time someone came up to me & said this, I’d be richer by $1:

“You know, when I heard that line from Obama, I thought, wow, he really slammed Sarah Palin! & then I looked up the full quote, & I realized that was not what he meant.”

Again, for the record, Obama said this:

“John McCain says he’s about change too and so I guess his whole angle is ‘watch out George Bush - except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education, policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics - we’re really gonna shake things up in Washington.’ that’s not change. That’s just calling something the same thing, something different. But you know you can’t - you know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You know you can (cheers) You can you can, wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after 8 years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing. It’s time to bring about real change to Washington. And that’s the choice you’ve got in this election.”

& yet the news media is only playing “you know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

The lessons to be learned here are

1. Context is everything.

2. Do your homework.

3. Pay attention.

No matter whom you support, the stakes are high.

& we all deserve better.

In honor of today (& at the behest of my boss), I’m inaugurating a new category: “Dumb Controversies.” Let’s hope I don’t have to use it much more.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.