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If you read my last column, that lets me know two things immediately: you’re a college student majoring in low-brow humor, and you see that I was right.

“Lipstick on a pig”? Whoa! Of all the bad things that you can call a woman, a pig is by far the worst. Like Blacks who get especially tight over being called the “N word” but let disses like “monkey” slide, it always amazed me when women got all huffy and puffy over the “B-Word”. It’s nothing more than a female dog (a lot of women call men dogs) and there are actually some very beautiful, graceful, sleek and noble “B-words” out there. A “pig” however, symbolizes three very definitive things and none of them are flattering.

First, there’s the general inability to control oneself. “Rutting” is what one thinks of a pig as doing and “rutting” is either defined as burrowing into the ground or following along in the same routine continuously, regardless of the results. Sound familiar?

Second, there’s the pig’s connotation with sloppiness. John McCain’s vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin may be tough but her personal affairs appear to be a mess. It’s now openly understood that the government plane that she claimed to sell on eBay for profit was actually sold in a private deal to an Alaskan businessman for a 400K loss. It’s come to light that she fired gubernatorial campaign aide and former legislative director John Bitney because he had an affair with Debbie Richter. Debbie and her husband Scott were close friends of the Palins. And of course, there’s the little issue of a candidate who opposes sex education having an unmarried and very pregnant daughter of her own.

Thirdly, as far as our pig references go, there are the physical connotations. Bloated, pink and ugly, pigs are the… well – pigs of the animal kingdom. In every good sitcom there’s a point where one female lead calls another female a pig and it garners laughs without fail. Can you imagine the effects that the use of this word can have on a woman both vain and insecure enough to enter a beauty pageant?

This is that fifth round we talked about in our last column. The round when Ali hit Foreman with the punch that changed everything.

Now, there is and will be of course, the rush by Obama defenders to claim that when Barack Obama said “You can put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig,” that he was talking about McCain/Palin’s attempt to drape their own Republican campaign which would really be nothing more than a continuation of Bush/Cheney under the beautiful banner of the word “change”. You may also wanna rush to Barack’s defense and angrily state that the Republicans don’t own a patent on the word “lipstick” nor should they assume that any usages of the word are attacks on one of their candidates.

And there will, of course, be the requisite charges by Republicans that Barack Obama knew exactly what he was doing by using the word “lipstick”– especially after Sarah Palin herself had said that the only difference between a hockey mom (which she is) and a pit bull IS lipstick, and that Obama is now “fighting dirty” and “hitting below the belt.”

Understand this: the Republicans are right this time. Barack Obama is doing exactly what any self-respecting American would want his or her president to do in a time of crisis or war: going for the win. And it’s not gonna be pretty. And it’s not gonna be clean. The losing locker room might try to console themselves with the notion that they played a good game, but the truth is that they’d rather be drinking the champagne.

Don’t sleep though. Expect the Republicans to come back firing wildly and defensively, trying to prove to others and themselves that they can give just as well as they can take. But the only thing their added desperation is going to do is leave them open to more blows. This one’s over folks. And for all those that questioned Barack Obama’s toughness or his ability to do whatever was necessary to win, this MAC Hot Tahiti’s for them. Try it on. Then push your nose back a little.