While a certain indignation about Barack Obama’s ‘lipstick/pig’ remarks is understandable, and probably necessary, it is encouraging to see that women are also turning Obama’s words to their advantage, wearing T-shirts and carrying signs–“God, guns and lipstick made America great”–that suggest wit rather than whinery. This is an elementary tactic which the aggrieved Left has never absorbed. In 1948 the famous British (or more specifically, Welsh) Labour politician Aneurin Bevan gave a speech in which he described Conservatives as “lower than vermin.” Rather than rear back in horror and indignation, young Tories embraced Bevan’s bumptious remark, and founded a series of Vermin Clubs across the country and wore lapel badges of a little blue rat. This had the effect of winning the public relations battle, on merits, and made Bevan look supremely foolish. One of Barack Obama’s most conspicuous attributes is his self-regard, and the McCain campaign would be wise to keep the complaints about pigs and lipstick to a minimum and do all it can to keep the phrase–and all it tells us about Obama and his admirers–alive in the public domain.
