Okay, so I can’t resist the “lipstick on a pig” thing

Here’s the story from ABC’s Jake Tapper (via HotAir, via Charlie):

"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."

The McCain campaign called it a smear, and the blogosphere is in full uproar mode.

At least, the few small corners I’ve been to today are.

Anyway. Ann Althouse says it’s nothing (although she parses it further). Sean Hackbarth also says it’s nothing.

I’m perfectly willing to go along with that, simply because the obsessive/compulsive political drive to pick at every little thing; every statement; every action; every word and syllable, both said and not said, drives me NUTS.

So: fine. The great orator didn’t mean to reference the Republican V.P. candidate when he invoked the subject noun from one of the best-remembered, most oft-repeated phrases from her convention speech. It just totally happened by accident, man. Went right over his head.

Fine.

Then he’s got to tell N.Y. Governor David Paterson to shut up (via Bruce at Badger Blogger):

“There are overtones of potential racial coding in the campaign,” Paterson said at an event in New York City.

Paterson said that while Republican candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin haven’t directly talked about race, it’s strongly implied in comments Alaska Gov. Palin and others have made about Obama. McCain’s camp said Paterson’s claim is false.

“The Republican party is too smart to call Barack Obama ‘black’ in a sense that it would be a negative,” Paterson said. “But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican convention. A ‘community organizer,’ they kept saying it, they kept laughing, like what does this mean?”

You don’t want us digging for “code,” then you don’t do it, either.

And one more thing: timely as always, Ed Garvey repeated the entirely debunked smear that Sarah Palin made a list of books to be banned from the Wasilla, Alaska library.

The internet moves fast, Ed. A word of advice: Snopes.