Heh &#8212; &#8220;Read My Lipstick&#8221;
<p>I am slack-jawed with admiration tonight.</p>
<p>The source of my amazement is reports that female McCain/Palin supporters have started making and distributing T-shirts that say &#8220;Read My Lipstick: MCain/Palin 2008&#8243;.  And wearing them in large numbers.</p>
<p>This is deployment of multi-leveled irony as an offensive weapon.  They are taking Obama&#8217;s &#8220;lipstick on a pig&#8221; remark and slugging him in the face with it.  They are taking the MSM&#8217;s vile smears and insinuations about Palin&#8217;s sex life and sexual presence and slugging <em>them</em> in the face with <em>that</em>.  They are kicking Gloria Steinem and every desexualized &#8220;Palin isn&#8217;t a woman&#8221; harridan in their collective teeth. Yes, they&#8217;re saying, you can be a former beauty queen who looks good in stockings and makeup <em>and a pit bull at the same time</em>, and we love you for it.</p>
<p>&#8220;Lipstick&#8221;, on pit bulls, on pigs, and on women, has been bouncing around as a loaded signifier in this campaign ever since the Palin nomination (was that only a couple of weeks ago?).  With this move, the Palin supporters have appropriated it for their own.  I predict that their opponents are not going to get it back; that every reference to lipstick from now on is going to remind everyone of the merciless, scurrilous rumor-mongering about Palin and how she has survived it with style just by unapologetically being who she is.</p>
<p>Whatever Sarah Palin&#8217;s substantive qualifications for VP may or may not be, I am an aficionado of political mockery and this is the sweetest, sharpest bit of street theater I have seen in <em>decades</em>.  It&#8217;s a satirical body-slam of every dismissive talking head who has tried to declare Palin unqualified and unserious. It&#8217;s worthy of the Yippies in their heyday.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not mainly Sarah Palin I&#8217;m admiring tonight, it&#8217;s her supporters, for cleverness and sheer brass. But OK, Palin deserves admiration too, for being the kind of person who can survive the most disgusting farrago of baseless shit I&#8217;ve ever seen flung at a politician, and for being the kind of person about whom this slogan can be such a devastating counterpunch.</p>
<p>Poor Obama.  You have been so quickly and <em>utterly</em> outclassed at the charisma game.  And by a gun-toting rural hick from a state nobody trendy ever goes to.  That&#8217;s gotta hurt.</p>
<p>Of course, for Palin supporters that&#8217;s the final turn of the screw.  Obama has already been responding to Palin&#8217;s presence in the race more than is tactically smart; that&#8217;s how he wound up uttering the &#8220;lipstick on a pig&#8221; gaffe they&#8217;re playing off of.   He&#8217;s fraying, losing his cool.  This is a shot &mdash; and a shrewd one, I&#8217;d say &mdash; at driving Obama completely bugfuck, increasing the odds he will melt down with a national audience watching.</p>
<p>None of it has anything to do with substance or issues of course.  But considered purely as mindfuck it is <em>beautiful</em>.  The Discordian in me bows in awe and respect.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m also a bit puzzled.  When did <em>conservatives</em> &mdash; of all people &mdash; learn how to play this sort of game?  Obviously while I wasn&#8217;t looking&#8230;</p>
