Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. Except -- and so I guess his whole angle is, “Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We're really gonna shake things up in Washington.” That's not change. That's just calling some -- the same thing, something different. But you know, you can -- you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.

How could we forget? These comments sparked one of the most embarrassing media spectacles of the presidential campaign, as pundits and journalists, conservative and otherwise, speculated that Obama was taking a shot at Sarah Palin since around the same time, she referred to herself as a pit bull wearing lipstick, nevermind that he was talking about policy and didn't mention Palin in his preceding remarks. A New York Post headline declared, “Holy Sow! Obama Takes a Pig and a Poke at Palin.”

Although some reasonable media figures recognized that the “lipstick on a pig” phrase has a long, long history in political rhetoric, that both Obama and McCain had previously used the phrase during the campaign, and that this story was a stunning waste of time and resources, the whole ordeal was an unpleasant reminder that the media has ... a problem.

So we'd expect that media figures wouldn't be eager to revisit that unfortunate incident. But seventeen months later, in an article about Robert Gibbs mocking Sarah Palin in a press briefing yesterday, New York Post writer Jennifer Fermino chose to write:

Team Obama has let loose at the Alaska ex-governor before. While campaigning in 2008, Barack Obama said, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig” -- which many took as a reference to Palin's famous line, “What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

What in 2008 was a baseless media freak-out directed by McCain campaign spin is now simply what happened according to the New York Post.