Opinion: Pigs and pols
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
It’s hard to imagine a siller ‘controversy’ than the kerfuffle over whether Barack Obama dissed Sarah ‘Pit Bull With Lipstick’ Palin by commenting, in relation to John McCain’s economic policies, that ‘you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.’ But the fact that even a manufactured controversy could be generated by a porcine analogy is a reminder of the prominent position of pig put-downs in everything from political discourse to Holy Scripture. Obama’s (unoriginal) comment about red-lipped pigs is in the tradition of referring to wasteful government spending as ‘pork’ (from ‘pork barrel; see also ‘bringing home the bacon’). The term ‘earmarks,’ of course derives from the practice of clipping an identification tag to the ear of a pig or other farm animal. But pigs are the objects of defamation way outside the Beltway. Gluttons ‘pig out.’ My mother used to upbraid her messy sons for turning our bedrooms into pigsties. Even Charles Schulz, the gentle progenitor of ‘Peanuts,’ called one of his characters ‘Pigpen’ because the kid was a dirt magnet.
Even Jesus disparaged pigs, and not just because they were unclean. He also suggested that they were uncouth. According to the Gospel of Matthew, he warned his disciples not to ‘cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.’ (To be fair, Jesus also took a dig, however metaphorical, at man’s best friend, saying: ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.’)
Occasionally one will come across a revisionist view of pigs citing their intelligence and loyalty. But the Obama-Palin tiff is a reminder that when politicians jab at each other, there may be a pig in the poke.