Earlier today, Chris Matthews gave his own special comment regarding the whole lipstick controversy that I think deserves to get as much publicity as possible. I've disagreed with Matthews too many times to count, but when he is correct, we need to point that out as well...and he was spot on today in his assessment of this fake outrage that is distracting us from focusing on what really matters.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a video of Matthews actually saying what he said, but it is posted at MSNBC's website:
Think about how people twenty years from now might look back at this 2008 election. The energy crunch has grown to cripple the economy. We're moving product on old railroads and gas-guzzling trucks. The air is clogged with pollution again from fossil fuels because it's all we have.
India, China, Russia, Brazil are grabbing and outbidding us for resources; our failed education system has cost us our innovative edge. We can't compete. We've fallen back to a second-rate power.
And the young people twenty years from now, and the older folks who can remember it will look back at this fateful election of 2008 that set the course for the century and see videotapes of us arguing about lipstick.
Lipstick.
This game that's being played is not an insult of a candidate. It's an insult to the intelligence of our democracy, which is really all we have, each of us, to decide and build the future.
Our only escape is to force ourselves, against all the distractions, to think through the hearts and minds of those young people who will have to live in the world we are now deciding who's to build, who's to lead us to.
Exactly right...this is an insult to the intelligence of our democracy...or what's left of it. And what do we do? Do we respond, which only seems to add a sense of credibility to the phoniness in the first place and keeps the fake outrage in the headlines? Or do we not respond at all and focus on the issues which the media seems determined to ignore altogether?
We all know that McCain's ad deliberately lies when it explicitly states that Obama's comments were directly related to Gov. Palin. The clip of Obama in McCain's ad cut out the previous comments Obama made just seconds earlier which prove that he was specifically talking about John McCain and his policies:
Of course, as the video demonstrates, it's fine to use the comment if you are a Republican. And then there's this:
So, it is perfectly fine and not sexist for John McCain to refer to Hillary Clinton's health care policies as "lipstick on a pig" but it is totally inappropriate and unbelievably sexist for Barack Obama to refer to John McCain's policies as "lipstick on a pig."
But, alas, at the end of the day, we're talking about lipstick and not the economy, the environment, health care, and all the other issues that matter.
Update w/ video:
Update II: Note that the above video was posted by a Republican with commentary at the end. It is the only video I can find, though.