I was browsing¹ through the web the other night when it dawned on me that the common lipstick² has put a smear³ on the nasty US election, or the other way around depending on your outlook.

Precisely⁴ I’m talking about the common American idiom “putting lipstick on the pig,” which Barrack Obama, the Democratic candidate used alluding⁵ to a talk by Sara Palin, Governor of Alaska and the running mate of John MaCain, the Republican candidate. Palin applied⁶ 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 nomination⁷ 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 spoke⁸ 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 stink⁹ 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 sinister¹⁰ 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.

Anyways, with the smear from the lipstick, the American election campaign has taken another nasty turn, and according to the Economist¹¹ (America not quite at its best, September 18, 2008), “this is mainly the Republicans’ fault”. “In the past two weeks,” continues the magazine, “while banks have tottered¹² and markets reeled, the contending Democrats¹³ and Republicans have squabbled and lied rather than debated. Mr McCain’s team has been nastier, accusing Mr Obama of sexism for calling the Republican vice-presidential candidate a pig, when he clearly did no such thing.”

Indeed much ado, as though Americans have no better worries to concern with than a lipstick.

Incidentally, if this article leaves you with an impression that I’m pro¹⁴-Democrat or that I support Obama, then that’s a wrong impression to leave. Let me clarify my position regarding American elections. First, I am pro democracy in that I think it a great idea that political leaders who do a bad job should be allowed to take a leave. Second, I support another US president from another Party to run that country thanks mainly and merely to the monumental mess the current administration has made, what with war in Iraq and turmoil¹⁵ on Wall Street. Other than that, it is my firm belief that American presidents are more or less the same, especially when it comes to foreign policy and international war-keeping.

But that’s more than our concern here. Here, and for now, we’ll just bother with the semantics involving “putting lipstick on a pig.” And that phrase means, again and to borrow a Chinese vernacular¹⁶, putting a trunk on a pig to make it elephant-like.