A Basic Lesson In Reading Comprehension

Let’s give John McCain the benefit of the doubt for a moment. For the sake of argument, let’s put aside questions that have been raised regarding his campaign and take as a given that John McCain is an honorable, trustworthy person who always puts his country first and makes strides to ensure that his campaign for the presidency is conducted in an honest manner. Knowing that, then can we all agree that John McCain is a %$@#@ idiot?

Seriously, is there any other conclusion we can reach when John McCain’s first instinct is to cry sexism when Barack Obama uses a common phrase :

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

Anyone who would look at the comments above and conclude that Barack Obama is referring to Sarah Palin as a pig is such a fool that educated people should be laughing them out of the public square. John McCain thinks he should be the next President of the United States, but I’m sitting here thinking “How the hell did John McCain even graduate from high school?”. Anyone with a basic reading comprehension can understand the phrase “lipstick on a pig” and how it relates to what Obama is discussing. This is the sort of thing John McCain should have learned in elementary school.

Since it’s not only John McCain, but all of his boosters as well who have seen their ability to read devolve to a kindergarten level, let’s break this down so John McCain can understand it. In the example above, what Barack Obama considers their “new ‘change’ mantra” is the “lipstick”, while their actual implied agenda is the “pig”. But even if you sympathise with McCain’s narcissism and insist that this is a personal attack, it still doesn’t mean what John McCain thinks it does. In that case, and again, this is basic reading comprehension here, Sarah Palin is the lipstick and John McCain is the pig.

But John McCain isn’t a pig. He’s a dumbass.


posted by greg on September 10, 2008 @ 12:27 pm

6 comments »

  1. What’s worse is that McCain basically used the same analogy himself in the recent past. Of course, we know it’s only offensive hate-mongering if Democrats say something that can be twisted out of context.

    Comment by orangehairboy — September 10, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

  2. If Barack Obama is stealing John McCain’s refrain “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig” to refer to Sarah Palin, then Senator Obama owes an apology to pigs everywhere.

    Comment by kamachanda — September 10, 2008 @ 2:42 pm

  3. …let’s put aside questions that have been raised regarding his campaign and take as a given that John McCain is an honorable, trustworthy person…

    Perhaps honorable, but…he can’t even define honor:

    There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
    Read it in my books.

    I’ve read your books.
    No, I’m not going to define it.

    But honor in politics?
    I defined it in five books. Read my books.

    http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1836909,00.html

    Comment by Doobie — September 11, 2008 @ 1:23 am

  4. Come on. Please. The reason for this is not that McCain’s camp believes Obama was comparing Palin to a pig but to create the meme that Obama was comparing Palin to a pig. This worked. Right wing radio and Fox news have picked it up. Hanity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter etc. have all picked it up and are running with it. Just throwing a little red meat out there so the wolves can tear it up.

    Comment by Ron Bootyman — September 11, 2008 @ 9:42 am

  5. Like Ron said, you know they don’t actually believe this, they were just manufacturing outrage so they wouldn’t have to talk about issues and so Obama would have to respond. It’s their SOP and it is effective. It keeps the Dems on the defense instead of the offense. We all know this.

    But, it’s like I always say – I don’t have the imagination to be a Republican. I could never have twisted Obama’s innocent comment to come up with something this outlandish! It is something of an art – sick and twisted, but still an art…

    Comment by rich — September 12, 2008 @ 1:14 pm

  6. Where would dumbass John McCain be without his rich wife t depend on? He would be a total failure.

    Comment by Eric — September 14, 2008 @ 12:00 pm

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