Context Changes Meaning of Popular Phrases

Sept. 11, 2008 — -- Context, as Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama learned Tuesday, really is everything.

Obama is not, by far, the first public figure to see his words parsed because of circumstance -- city officials have been ousted, school board superintendents have been asked to resign and elections have even been lost over phrases that at one time seemed catchy but in the end backfired.

In 1999, David Howard, an aide to Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony A. Williams, had his own words dissected and was forced to resign after sparking public outcry over his use of the term "niggardly" when describing the budget of a city in which the majority of residents are black.

Despite the public's perception, "niggardly" by definition means "ungenerous" or "meager." And even though the term had certainly been uttered before -- much like the lipstick phrase had been used before by John McCain himself -- Howard left his post under heavy scrutiny, according to reports of the incident in The Washington Post.

Obama, too, faced immense criticism from the McCain camp, which immediately called for an apology after the Illinois senator used the expression "lipstick on a pig" to describe Republican presidential candidate John McCain's claims to change politics if elected.

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The McCain camp said the comment was "very gendered," while Obama refused to issue an apology and held his ground saying, "The McCain camp would much rather have this [campaign] be about phony and foolish diversions."

Kathleen Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that while the lipstick phrase -- known to be a reference to making an issue look better than it actually is by "dressing it up -- " has been spoken many times before by politicians, the circumstance in which it is used can change how people react to it.