Lipstick on a pit bull, genius.

Pit bull.

Not “pig.”

The reaction of the audience speaks for itself. Watch the clip here.

Now, can you imagine if McCain had joked like this about Michelle O?

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There’s lots of debate here in the comments thread and across the blogosphere about whether the McCain camp is overreacting, whether Obama should get the benefit of the doubt for using a common old metaphor at the wrong place and time, etc., etc.

Was he being malicious? Probably not. But it’s yet another in a long line of rhetorical gaffes that demonstrate his ineptitude.

Or, as one commenter below summed it up succinctly: “The guy’s a jerk.”

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I should also note Obama’s diss of McCain. Welcome to civility, hope, change, and new politics:

“That’s not change,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said of what Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is offering.

“You know, you can put lipstick on a pig,” Obama said, “but it’s still a pig.”

The crowd rose and applauded, some of them no doubt thinking he may have been alluding to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s ad lib during her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’” Obama continued, “it’s still gonna stink after eight years.

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Reader Linda: “Someone commenting on my blog re. the Obama ‘lipstick on a pig’ gaffe suggested that disgruntled women should send Obama their lipstick. Not a bad idea!”