George Lakoff has written a number of important and informative works on language that are relevant and illuminating with regards to the recent flap over Barack Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment. As Lakoff has pointed out in his seminal work, "Metaphors We Live By", the use of metaphor is a linguistic technique by which we attempt to share and generalize a well recognized and familiar experience and extend its properties to a new event or experience. Using metaphor in this way creates a "frame", or a set of properties areound what is being described that are often subconsciously inpreted by the recipient of the metaphor. Most of the time, the properties of the frame are intended, and the creator of the metaphor expects the framing that accompanies the use of the metaphor to have a certain impact. But the creativity and unpredictabilty of the human brain sometimes results in some novel and creative meanings for metaphor that go quite beyond what was expected or intended.
John McCain has expressed outrage over the use of the "lipstick on a pig" metaphor that Barack Obama used in reference to Sarah Pailin. He is attempting to re-frame the metaphor to imply that referring to Pailin in the context of this kind of metaphor is sexist. He seems to be making a case that Obama has stooped to comparing Sarah Pailin to a pig (which may be as insulting to pigs as it is untrue). There is a certain irony to McCain's claims in this matter. John McCain's choice of Sarah Pailin as a running mate has been questioned on many substantive grounds. What seems obvious is that his choice of a woman as a running mate was a calculated move designed to set up this charge of sexism against Obama as a tool in the campaign. And that manipulative move itself points out who is really guilty of sexism: McCain himself. His premeditated and shameless use of Sarah Pailins gender to advance his own political ambitions is unmasked as sexism of the worst kind, much worse than that of which he (wrongly) accuses Obama. His sexism is underscored by his choice of a thoroughly unqualified and inappropriate running mate, someone he knew would become a lighning rod for criticism that could be turned to his own purpose.
But the irony doesn't end there. Indeed it gets more delicious. The metaphor that Obama used, "putting lipstick on a pig", is commonly understood to mean dressing up something that is ugly to look better, but not really improving the underlying ugliness. McCain's eagerness to cry "sexism" required him to make the case that Obama was comparing Sarah Pailin to a pig. But the truth is, it's just as plausible to imagine in this metaphor that Sarah Pailin was being described as the lipstick....being used to attempt to dress up John McCain, who is the real pig. John McCain, whose campaign is unable to draw crowds of more than a few hundred supporter, who can't come up with a cogent statement of his stand on the issues, who can't even be consistent with his own beliefs over any period of his time (let alone the Truth) - he is the one wearing the lipstick. And the lipstick does nothing for him.
So McCain's protestation to Barbara Walters on national television suddenly takes on a wonderful new meaning. "Words matter", he said, but John McCain obviously does not understand the ways that words can cut.