The McCain campaign went ballistic with faked outrage after Obama, referring strictly to McCain’s continuation of Bush’s policies and making no reference whatsoever to Sarah Palin, called McCain’s claims about his policies “lipstick on a pig,” as well as “old fish in a newspaper.” Somehow this was supposed to be a slur against Palin, though there is literally zero connection to Palin in the statement, and the expression “lipstick on a pig” is a common one, especially in politics. But the idea is that lipstick must refer to a woman and therefore Obama called Palin a pig is somehow in order, and, we are forced to assume, Obama must from this point on refrain from using any metaphors which contain any reference to anything related to the female gender, even when talking about things completely unrelated to Sarah Palin.

However, a statement made by McCain late last year was found to include the same expression; when talking about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, he said, “I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” McCain repeated that expression this year in May. So by the McCain campaign’s own standards, McCain’s statement was offensive, disgraceful, and sexist, and he owes Hillary Clinton a sincere apology. It was worse than Obama’s, in fact, because McCain was referring to a woman’s policy, and so the expression was far more direct in its insult. Not to mention that McCain only laughed and sympathized when one of his supporters called Hillary a “bitch.” (Of course, McCain has called his own wife a “trollop” and something else I won’t print, so this should be nothing new.) So McCain really needs to apologize to Hillary and to women everywhere. By his own campaign’s standards.

Or we can recognize that the McCain campaign is dishonorable, disingenuous, and hypocritical, and just leave it at that.