You’ll recognize the classic painting American Gothic as the backdrop. American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Portraying a pitchfork-holding farmer and a younger woman (imagined to be his wife or daughter) in front of a house of Carpenter Gothic style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art.

Here’s our version of American Politics.

As we get closer and closer to Election day, it just seems to get more wild.

It’s nice when we can accept our political candidates and allow them to retain their personalities even after they take office.

Somedays it’s too easy. Who in their right mind in todays world (and being under the scrutiny he is under) makes a comment like this?  

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” Obama said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to a previous Sarah Palin joke. “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”

If I called my competitor a pig or fish, would my customer/prospect think that it was witty or would they take it as the insult it so obviously was meant to mean?

We must remember you never get looked down upon for taking the high road. Some comments are hard to live down years later…remember Jesse Jackson and his “Htmietown” slur?

An article in the Washington Post on Feb. 13, 1984, had Rick Atkinson reporting Jesse Jackson as saying, “the most attempts to disrupt this campaign have come from Jewish people.” At the end of the article Atkinson stated that “In private conversations with reporters, Jackson referred to Jews as ‘Hymie’ and to New York as ‘Hymietown.’ ‘I’m not familiar with that,’ Jackson said. ‘That’s not accurate.’ ”

That was twenty four years ago! Have we not learned anything?

See the pic on Flickr