pigs and lipstick, boy!

Way back decades ago when this current presidential race thing was first getting started one of our US congressmen here in Kentucky took a few licks on the chin and eventually apologized for referring to Senator Barack Obama as "boy." I know Congressman Davis. He is in no way whatsoever a racist and in fact has little tolerance for anyone who is. The context of his remarks, given during a political rally speech, were not intended to be racist, but were immediately grabbed and distorted by some who wanted to discredit his person (he was running for reelection) for their own political advantage. So, even knowing that he meant nothing even remotely bigoted, he offered his regrets just so he could move on and win the election. And he did.

What? What did he say? Did she just say what I thought she said? Did he mean to say that - that way? Oh no he di-unt!! Semantics and accusations of meaning and taking one word of one sentence of one paragraph of one speech completely out of context seems to be in super abundance during this presidential race. The finger pointing is beginning to come across as childish and whiny to me. Both campaigns are doing it. The political commentators are doing it. The bloggers are doing it. And sadly, people at the water cooler are doing it.

Yesterday Senator Obama said something about a pig and lipstick. The McCain/Palin folks screamed foul. They say Barack was referring to the lady governor. He says he wasn't, it was a reference to trying to dress up the same old way of doing things in Washington. The M/P folks should know that. Their candidate used the same exact phrase several months ago when they thought he'd be running against Hillary. If she was offended I don't remember hearing about it.

It's mostly hypocrisy. A few days ago former president Jimmy Carter was in the middle of an interview when he does exactly what Geoff Davis from Kentucky did. The same people who kicked and screamed and accused the congressman of practically carrying a kkk card did a nervous cough, turned their heads and pretended they didn't hear anything. To be fair, it really ought to be a goose/gander sort of thing.

Parsing words is one of the things about campaigns that frustrates me. We want the candidates to be honest and frank. Yet, they are not allowed to say what they mean in a direct way for fear of being taken completely out of context. It's getting to the point that no one in public service can say anything that might maybe even in the most remote way be possibly considered somewhat or even just a little bit something that could be turned inside-out or vaguely not nice.