“You know, they say, the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”
Palin didn’t create the “women + dog + lipstick” joke formula.
One earlier example is in the 2005 book What Every Man Wants In A Woman / What Every Woman Wants In A Man, written by Texas televangelist and author, Pastor John Hagee. In that enlightening manual, the good Pastor wrote:
“Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick.”
I’m sure Hagee’s female readers enjoyed that knee slapper.
Of course, Palin’s version of the woman/canine analogy quickly became the most famous.
After she said it, it was quoted, analyzed, praised and mocked for days, in the news and around water coolers.
Then Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama got into the act. On September 10, 2008, while commenting on some of the policy “changes” proposed by Palin’s running mate, John McCain, Obama said this:
“That's not change. That's just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.”
Well, holy moly! That got the Republicans as mad as honked-off horny toads! So, they responded by calling Obama, among other things, a sexist pig.
That made the Democrats as mad as a bull seeing red, so they responded by saying...
Nevermind. We had to listen to porcine puns and canine quips by politicians, headline writers and the TV newserati for weeks. It drove us all crazy. (Me anyway.)I’m giving the animal rights group PETA the last word on the great animal analogy debate of 2008.
PETA has a Google Adsense ad that comes up on some websites if you get there by Googling “lipstick on a pig.” The ad says:
“Lipstick on a pig? Pigs shouldn’t have lipstick unless they’ve been kissed. Help Pigs now!”
‛Nuff said.
