“Do you know what they say the difference between a hockey Mom and a pitbull is? Lipstick.” —Sarah Palin
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” —Barack Obama
Could you imagine the hysterical pearl-clutching if Republicans had made the same comment about a female Democrat? The media would’ve spent the next two weeks “covering” and “investigating” the GOP’s systemic misogyny, wondering aloud when those Republican chauvinists were planning to handcuff barefoot women to the kitchen stove or force them to breed babies in their latest “Handmaid’s Tale” fantasy. But since it was Obama, the media yawned and moved on: It’s just an expression, folks! Clearly, he didn’t mean anything by it.
Sure.
Remember how the media pilloried Mitt Romney for his “binders full of women” line? You would’ve thought he tried to suspend the 19th Amendment! But that’s how the media operates. There’s one standard for liberals, another for conservatives — and never shall the two meet.
Even though the media let Obama’s misogyny slide, the phrase “lipstick on a pig” does have descriptive utility. It’s actually a relatively new expression, one that seems to have been coined by author Stella Gibbons in her 1946 novel, “Westwood.” It was used infrequently until the 1980s when its popular usage exploded. And you can see why: It’s colorful, descriptive, and memorable.
It can also be used to denigrate women — as then-candidate Barack Obama was well aware.
Say what you want about Obama, but he’s one of the most calculating, deliberate politicians of our lifetime, and it’s entirely contrary to everything we know about the man to assume that his “pig” reference was accidental. He absolutely knew what he was doing, and it was 100% intentional.
You know who else loves that “lipstick on a pig” phrase? Marketers.
With us, it refers to a surface-level rebrand. We’re not talking about reintroducing a line of potato chips (or whatever) by investing in R&D and actually improving the formula! Instead, the potato chips stay exactly the same, but we redesign the bag, jazz up the logo, and maybe change the color scheme to mimic a better-selling rival.
That’s putting lipstick on a pig: Sure, the pig is still a pig, but look — we’ve made a few cosmetic tweaks to the packaging, so hopefully the public will give us a second look! (And not notice that the product is still going, “Oink, oink.”)
In a marketing sense, the switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris continues to be the most blatant, most ridiculously transparent attempt to put lipstick on a pig in modern American political history.
Bar none.
It’s the exact same policies. The exact same direction. The exact same priorities. Overall, it’s even the same administration! The only change was to the figurehead; the Democrats want to swap an overaged and underwhelming leader with an unelected San Francisco liberal who’ll continue the status quo.
Harris can’t differentiate her goals and objectives from Biden’s. It’s impossible because the Democrats want to have it both ways: Somehow, the policies of Biden were all spectacular successes (he saved democracy, you know), but also, if you want something new, here’s Harris! See? Biden was a tired old white man, but Harris is a minority woman who’s turning 60 in two months. That’s totally different!
For the Democrats, this truly constitutes wholesale change. This is the party, after all, where “diversity” doesn’t refer to diversity of thought or uniqueness of the individual but satisfying a statistician’s projection of “idealized” racial and gender numbers. It’s all surface-level diversity.
And that’s all the Democrats want to do: Make a cosmetic, surface-level change, while keeping their policies and agenda completely untouched. They’re delighted with the direction we’re heading and simply want to switch drivers. And it makes sense: They’ve occupied the White House 12 out of the past 16 years! This is what they truly believe.
Meanwhile, 65% of American voters disagree, believing that our country is heading in the wrong direction and is in dire need of a course correction.
Harris represents lipstick on a pig. The American people are tired of dining on pork chops, and that’s still what the Democrats are selling. It’s still going, “Oink, oink.”
If you expect anything different from a Harris administration than what we’ve already gotten from a Biden administration, well, you might as well wait for pigs to fly.
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