The theme of Slate.com’s Culture Gabfest posted today is “Resistance Is Futile.” It’s very fitting. No matter how tempting it is to discuss the real issues of this campaign season–government bailouts, two no-end-in-sight wars, legitimate questions about John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate–people can’t resist talking about “narratives.” Translation: “frivolities.” Who said what about who? What?! Barack Obama called the nice lady a pig? That’s mean. What a mean man. Don’t listen to him, girlfriend. He’s just a mean, mean, condescending, espresso sipping, panini eating Upper West Side liberal elite who went to college. He needs to learn a lesson about country hospitality.

But really, who cares if Obama may have inferred that Sarah Palin is a pig with listick? What are you, one of them namby-pamby PC-types gettin’ your britches all a-knotted and a-tangled? Hey, I’ll straight out call her a pig right now: Sarah Palin is a PIG. A piggy pig pig with a snout nose and a wiggly-waggly curly lil’ tail. She eats out of a trough, sleeps in a pile of mud, wolves are always trying to blow her house down. She’s a little piggy who went to market to eat a bit of meat. That’s right. I done saids it. Deal with it.

But let’s get real here, folks. Can I get real wit’ ya’lls? Why won’t you let me get real? C’mon–Let me get real: By making the “pig with lipstick” comment, Obama was referring to the McCain/Palin camp by using a well-known country aphorism in order to get a laugh from the crowd (that kind of stuff plays big in the sticks). In fact, it’s such a well-known phrase that–hey!–even McCain used it earlier this year when talking about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan! I guess back then the members of the liberal elite media must have been taking a day off to sip their espressos, eat their paninis, and discuss their general disdain and condescension towards salt-of-the-earth, Grizzly Adams-types (you know, coal miners, peanut farmers, butter churners, whatever it is those people “do” out in the country). Because otherwise it would obviously have been a huge, important, newsmaking headline.