If I am a gentleman, and you are a lady, then who's going to put the pig out of the parlor?

Last week we had dogs with liptsick, this week it's pigs.

But apparently what's good for the dog is not good for the pig. McCain has lashed out, suggesting that Obama was making a veiled porcine allusion to Sarah Palin. McCain seems to have forgotten that the "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" line was his own (one of his better ones, actually), used quite recently in reference to Senator Clinton's heath care plan. No one then claimed that McCain was calling Clinton a pig, but then Clinton had never compared herself to a dog and, in any case, probably wears lipstick less often than former beauty queen Palin.

So now the party who fought the Equal Rights Amendment tooth and nail, the party who used to scoff at “political correctness,” the party who have consistently treated feminism like a persistent skin disease are now apparently outraged by some perceived sexism against Sarah Palin. Is anyone else confused?

As a good self-flagellating "new man" who came of age during the rise of the politics of identity in the late 80's/early 90's, I've done my best to spot the sexism and to feel guilty for it. Yes, critics have questioned whether she is a good mother but, quite frankly, if Obama had been parading a baby around amidst the noise and klieg lights at the DNC in a similar ostentatious display of parental adoration, I have the vague suspicion that that too would have provoked comment.

The fact is that Palin has been trading on her motherhood and, in doing so, has invited comment. It was her choice to flaunt being a “hockey mom” as a credential and to make a point of her role as a mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome. She has made her motherhood a part of her political identity in a way that few male politicians would do with fatherhood precisely because she knows she can get political mileage out of being a female candidate. She has every right to do so. But her critics have every right to call her on it.

McCain’s outrage is every bit as silly as the outrage over Clinton’s JFK comment during the primaries, and let’s hope for everyone’s sake he drops it quickly. Distractions such as this, along with the feigned outrage over supposed sexism in the election coverage, should be relegated to the darker corners of the blogosphere along with speculation over Obama’s suspicious middle name.

And as for the implications of lipstick on pigs vs. lipstick on dogs? Can't we talk about something simpler, like the Russian intervention in Georgia, or the feasibility of cellulosic ethanol? If only.