Political uproar broke out last week when the Democratic presidential nomination Barack Obama used the expression, "you can put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig" in reference to the McCain/Palin claim that they will bring change to Washington. Within hours McCain had accused Obama of slamming his vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. This immediately reminded me of the unit in class where we discussed how historians will choose to take certain pieces of evidence and omit others to distort the original message. While it is true that he said, "you can put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig", and that on its own it could seem that it is in fact a slam, but it is important to look at the context. He wasn't talking about Sarah Palin, he was talking about the so called change that McCain wants to bring. The passage actually went like this
"That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."
It is a prime example of information being manipulated to convince your audience what you want them to think. The most ironic part of the situation is that last year, in reference to Hilary Clinton's plan for a new healthcare system, McCain used roughly the same line. He said "I think they put some lipstick on the pig, but it's still a pig.". Why is it ok for McCain to say it, but it is a political slam when Obama says it? It isn't. The politician has the same responsibilities as a historian not to distort the truth. Regardless of the moral responsibilities, is it constitutionally legal to use this type of campaigning, with advertisements distorting images of the other candidates, and taking their speeches and comments out of context?
2 comments:
Nice comments on the importance of context, and it's good you provided more of the Obama quote (context) when he made the "lipstick/pig" comment. Context is such a key part of communication! Without it, it seems we can make words mean whatever we want them to mean.
This is a really great connection, nice job! In all honesty though, that's pretty upsetting. This example reminded me a lot of the incident that happened with a New Trier student earlier this year. It was a couple days before the inner city school kids were coming to register and she talked with a reporter about how she thought it was a really great, justified. They used her interview, but they took it out of context and spun it so it seemed like she was saying the exact opposite. Context it so important! It's somewhat understandable for a reporter, afterall, they're writing a story and need evidence to support it. However, for such allegations to come from a presidential candidate is just downright petty and unnecessary!
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