Lipstick on the campaign trail_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Lipstick on the campaign trail

I was browsing through the web the other night when it dawned on me that the common lipstick has put a smear on the nasty US election, or the other way around depending on your outlook.

Precisely I’m talking about the common American idiom “putting lipstick on the pig,” which Barrack Obama, the Democratic candidate used alluding to a talk by Sara Palin, Governor of Alaska and the running mate of John MaCain, the Republican candidate. Palin applied the lipstick in her campaign speech first. Then Obama borrowed it. Then the whole MaCain camp intervened saying Obama was sexist.

First, Palin in an ad lib (not prepared before hand) answer to a media question the day she made her Vice-Presidential nomination acceptance speech, said: “You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.”

That remark was picked up by Obama, who spoke to supporters in Virginia: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”

You know the rest. McCain’s campaign has since seized Obama by the collar (metaphorically of course, I must clarify) and demanded why he dared call Palin a pig.

He didn’t. Obama’s lipstick reference was perhaps sinister in intent in that he used Palin’s own word to describe another Republican White House as putting old wine in a new bottle (which is an old cliché and certainly not much fun to either party). But Obama’s idiom itself, “putting lipstick on a pig”, is an innocent, commonly used phrase which means to dress something up.