[I'm not going to turn this blog into some pro-McCain political diatribe - so please don't stop reading, etc. I've just decided I'm not going to vote for Barack Obama. I'll try to stop posting on politics for a while.]

[This post was originally titled "Almost Done with Obama" - but I got so angry typing it up that I've deleted the "Almost" - I'm done with him.]

My liberal friends will have to forgive me, but I am almost done with Barack Obama. When I opened up the Drudge Report this morning and saw his comment about putting lipstick on a pig, I literally gasped. My instinctive reaction was that he had just called Sarah Palin a pig. And I could care less what he calls her – that’s not why I gasped. I gasped because how unbelievably stupid a thing that was to say at this particular point in this campaign.

I understand that the Obama campaign later explained it by saying that it’s just a saying, and that he wasn’t referencing Palin in any way – and I also saw that McCain himself has used that saying in the past – but here’s my point of contention:

Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer in the midst of a hotly-contested presidential campaign. He knows that everything he says is going to be parsed and interpreted to death. There are other ways to say what he said, and there is no way that anyone can convince me that he did not say it the way he did as a pointed reference regarding Palin’s comment last week about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull being lipstick. (Which I also thought was kind of stupid – but at least harmless. And I suppose there is a certain audience who appreciates comments like that.) And even if Obama didn’t intentionally say it that way for that specific reason, he HAD to at least know that it could and would be interpreted that way.

Here’s the video:

And his next statement was that “you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change,” which by itself is innocuous enough, but when taken together with the lipstick comment appears to be referring to McCain.

Look, I know that the Obama campaign will spin this until they’re blue in the face saying that he didn’t mean anything by these statements and that they weren’t targeted at Palin or McCain. And I know that many people will give them the benefit of the doubt. But I won’t. I think they’re smart enough to know what they’re doing, and I think it’s insulting for them to do it and then to try to tell me that’s not what they were doing. If you’re going to make the attack, at least have the courage to stand behind it.

And, in any event, whether it was intentional or not, it’s about the dumbest thing he could have said right now. It’s clear that the democrats are not going to succeed by being sexist against Sarah Palin. And it’s lending credence to Hillary Clinton’s argument that the only reason Obama is the nominee now is because of sexism during the primaries. (Which I didn’t buy at the time but now I am starting to see as a real possibility.) The liberal overreaction to Palin’s selection as the VP nominee is exactly what caused her (and McCain’s) popularity to surge, and to continue to focus on her – especially in a way that can be interpreted as sexist – is only doing more harm. It’s just dumb politics. It’s also petty and insulting and is as far away as you can get from the new style of enlightened, “post-everything” politics that Obama is supposed to stand for.

It also shows – in my opinion at least – extremely poor judgment on his part. Again, even if the meaning I attribute to his statement is not what he meant, it’s so mind-bogglingly stupid for him to have said it that it calls his judgment into question.

[Finally, and maybe this only bothers me as a southerner, but when did Obama start speaking like a southern revival preacher? Listen to that video above - especially the way he keeps saying "policy" - you would think he was from and had never left the rural south. Hillary Clinton adopted that same fake southern accent whenever she spoke to black churches during the primaries and it drove me nuts. Now Obama's doing it. I guess because the speech was in Lebanon, Virginia, he feels he needs to adopt a southern accent. It's insulting. To a southerner, at least. Or maybe just to this angry southerner.]

I was never sure I was going to vote for Obama. I desperately wanted him to win the democratic primary, and I am still extremely thankful that he did, but that was only so I wouldn’t have to listen to Hillary Clinton for the next few months – or god forbid, for four or eight years. But now I’m sure that I am not going to vote for him. I may not vote for McCain. I may do a write-in or I may vote Libertarian or something equally meaningless in this election, but I am not voting for Obama.

[Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com (who gives Obama more benefit of the doubt than I do) does a very good job of rounding up the commentary on Obama's statement:

DID OBAMA MEAN TO CALL SARAH PALIN A PIG? It's probably just a slip, but . . . "The crowd apparently took the 'lipstick' line as a reference to Palin."

Reader David Schlosser emails: "This will endear him to all those
disaffected Hillary voters." And former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift
is calling on Obama to apologize.

All I can say is, some pig.

UPDATE: "Lipstick on a trainwreck."

Plus, Tom Spaulding: "This is a major gaffe from Obama."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Marc Ambinder doesn't think Obama was talking about Palin.

But reader Mark Martin emails: "This was just plain stupid on
Senator Obama's part. It must be due to Karl Rove mind rays or
something."

MORE: A reader emails: "Surely a man smart enough to be elected
president should have foreseen how these remarks would be taken. Don’t
Harvard law grads know the impact of words?" Everybody stumbles now and
then. I say, don't make any more of it than if McCain had said
something similar.

On the other hand, reader Alin Corle emails: "I think if you look at
the entire quote, you realize that Obama was referring to Palin in the
'pig' comment. In the next phrase, as reported by Politico.com, Obama
referred to 'old fish' wrapped in a paper of change that still stinks,
a clear personal attack on McCain. I think both comments taken together
are quite outrageous."

Stay tuned.

MORE STILL: Reader Meryl Jefferson emails: "Palin is, quite
obviously, getting inside Obama’s head. This was beyond stupid! This
will be played by McCain quite easily: Sarah will continue to bait him
and he just goes for it. Remember the Wyle E. Coyote/Roadrunner meme
that Ann Althouse set up when Palin was first rolled out? Well, she was
right!"

Meanwhile, David Winslow invokes Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond:

Seriously, nobody with half a brain thinks Obama was referring to Palin.

But, nobody with half a brain thinks a basic compliment at your friend's 100th birthday party belies veiled racism.

Just saying it would be nice to have these things treated consistently for a change. Consistently sane.

Hmm. As a Lott critic on that issue, I'm not sure how I should take
that, but okay. And reader Tim Ryan reads the whole Obama statement and
says: "He's a skilled orator, and he brings it all back around to
McCain and Palin. It is absolutely clear that he is tying Palin to the
Pig and McCain to the Old Fish. He didn't construct this accidentally
or innocently. Unless you think that he isn't skilled or smart, and we
all know that he is. He tries to create some plausible deniability, but
there are only two explanations - he is either a mean-spirited p***, or
he's an idiot. And the latter simply isn't true."

Meanwhile, Barry Dauphin writes: "Obama was inelegant in his
comment. He was referring to Palin. Although it was not a good comment,
getting hysterical about it is not smart. Put it this way, Obama's
comment was hardly post partisan. He's usually a better speaker than
this. He and his campaign must be quite rattled. They are playing to
their base instead of going after independents. Why are they doing
that, unless they are worried about their base? Do they have internal
polling showing things to be worse for them than the MSM is reporting?"

Yeah, other people are wondering that, too.

And reader Alan Jan calls it "An Obama Macaca Moment. It's the
judgement stupid. You've got to be smart enough not to offend
African-Americans by dropping a Macaca reference and you cannot drop a
Pig reference if you are having problems with women in a presidential
race. Could have the same impact as Allen's misstep that cost him a
close election."

And here's what Megan McArdle said about Trent Lott: "But it doesn't really matter, does it? In politics we go by what they say, not what they wanted to say."

Charles Austin
weighs in: "So let me get this straight, Senator Obama is too smart to
call Sarah Palin a pig but not smart enough to realize how bad this
comment is going to sound to anyone not basking in the glow of his
halo."

And G.M. Roper is mailing Obama some lipstick.

STILL MORE: C.J. Burch emails: "Informal survey of the women in my house...very offended. The men...not as much. Odd."

And Scott Llewellyn writes: "Um, you're kidding right? a slip? a
gaffe? Obama just innocently and/or randomly used images that invoked
Palin (lipstick) and Mccain (age)? Someone lauded for his rhetorical
skills didn't see where that was going? Someone lauded for his
intelligence couldn't foresee that, even if innocent, his images would
be interpreted as references to Palin and Mccain? This is not even a
close call (my wife gasped when i told her what obama said about
pig/lipstick, without knowing any context or having me prime her with a
reference to Palin), and Obama can't have it both ways (I'm a brilliant
speaker, but not responsible for the obvious implications of the images
I use)."

Here's the video.

And Jim Treacher emails with a suggested McCain-Palin response:

They haven't demanded an apology for any of the other garbage being
thrown the last 11 (only 11!) days. They've either hit back or ignored
it, and it's worked. She hasn't played the victim, which makes Obama
look even dumber when he whines.

If I were in the McCain camp, I'd use this thing to get even further inside Barry's head:

"We're pleasantly surprised by Senator Obama's newfound sense of
humor, and look forward to watching it develop over the coming weeks
and months."

Heh. Jonah Goldberg has similar advice.

FINALLY: Les Jones
thinks it's much ado about nothing: "I don’t think Obama was referring
to Palin as a pig. He was using a common expression ('putting lipstick
on a pig'). I say that as someone who likes Palin and who thinks Obama
is a gaffe factory. There have been lots of hits on Palin. I don’t
think this is one of them."

And Vic Sapphire writes: "I christen this affair 'SWINEGATE' You
heard it from me first, and I'm sure you'll agree that the way it rolls
off the tongue is delightful!"]