RedPhoenixxx wrote:
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From the quote, the reference can either apply to the candidates or to the policies.
Except that in the quote, he mentions the policies, and not the candidates. So, no, not really.
Er. Did you just skip over the part where he said that "John McCain says he's about change...". He elaborates on the ways in which he's exactly like Bush, then goes into the pig with lipstick and rotted fish analogies.
I'll ask again: Is he talking about the list of policies, or the candidate(s)? I'd say that he's talking about whether the candidates themselves represent change, and not specifically about the policies themselves. Those are examples of why he believes that McCain isn't really about change.
The thrust of the conversation is about McCain's positions on issues, not about the issues themselves. He didn't mention a position on an issue and then list off reasons why it's the same as Bush's position. Had he done that, we could say that the analogies were about that position on that issue. No. He mentioned a candidate, then rattled off a list of reasons why he's not different than Bush, and then tossed in the pig and fish analogies.
He was talking about the candidates and their positions. You have to kinda spin it a bit to say the analogies were about those positions themselves.
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Have you watched the video of that speech? What do you think the crowd was roaring at when he said that phrase? Do you honestly think they were all thinking "Gee. He's right. Their policies really aren't that different from Bush's".
They weren't "roaring". They cheered and clapped, like they probably were told to at that moment.
And second, they might've been cheering because he denounced the Republican hypocrisy in an colourful way. Or maybe because they remembered McCain using this expression on Hillary. I don't know, but my money is still that they cheered and clapped because they felt it was one of those moments where you should cheer and clap. They felt the "joke".
Several people in the audience
stated afterwards that they connected the "pig in lipstick" statement to Palins statement that the difference between her and a bulldog was "lipstick".
linked article wrote:
The crowd rose and applauded, some of them later telling reporters* that they thought Obama had been alluding to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's ad lib during her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."
For full disclosure the guy writing that modified his original statement by observing that those people didn't actually say that they thought it referred to Palin, but clearly believed it was a reference/response to her own statement about being bulldog with lipstick.
I think that's a pretty fine distinction to make though. They got the reference. We can pretend that was unintentional, but how many times do we have to do this song and dance where Obama says something, the crowd believes he's said one thing, but that turns out to have negative connotations so his camp claims that's not what he said at all.
For a guy who's supposedly really great at giving speeches, it's amazing how often his audience apparently misunderstands him. I seem to recall we had a thread about almost the exact same thing when he appeared to be telling union voters that he'd end NAFTA, but once he'd gotten the delegates from those primaries suddenly we're supposed to parse the exact language of what he said and realize that he didn't really say that at all.
What do you call a politician who gives speeches in which the people who are sitting in front of him overwhelmingly believe he said one thing, but then he goes back and parses the language to say he meant something else later?
Dishonest.
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He was calling McCain a shriveled fish and Palin a pig with lipstick. Two analogies that play very very well to the Obama crowd...
No way, most Democrats don't think Palin is a pig. They even probably think she's hot. They might think she's a fundamentalist hard-right anti-choice pro-gun inexperienced nobody that would easily make the worst President the US has ever had in its history, but a pig, no.
Not the point. I didn't say that most Democrats think Palin is a pig. I'm saying that the audience he was trying to appeal to appreciated a reference that appeared to be comparing her to a pig and responded positively to it. He knew that by using that reference everyone in the audience would connect it to the "bulldog" statement made by Palin, allowing them to be "in" on the joke.
Um... Except it was pretty obvious. And if you're going to do that sort of joke, you can't later say you didn't really mean it.
