To Queen Elizabeth II: "Nice tiara, Sweetie" To Margaret Thatcher: "Yeah, Sweetie, you were a great Prime Minister" To Nancy Pelosi: "Hey you’re rockin’ that Speaker of the House position, Sweetie"

"Big deal? Not really. With this man, nothing sticks. And I do not quite see how this remark can be enough for someone not to vote for him."

Actually, what will be the deal breaker is this mans arrogance and the fact that he has told voters who their nominee will be before the voting is done. In a land of so called democracy, turning your back on active voters and telling them who there nominee is,  is risky buisness. Especially when we are currently looking at a 50/50 vote split. One has to wonder with all the gaffs if hes not trying to lose the last stretch.

with the current state of our country, some of you are seriously going to be swayed by this?  pfffft.

Oh, please, give me a break:
_______________________________________
Agar asks Obama what he’s "going to do to help American autoworkers."

He replies, "Hold on one second, sweetie, we’ll do a press avail, thanks" but didn’t get back to Agar.

Hour later, Obama left a voicemail for Agar. Obama apologized for not getting back to her. He also told Agar he has a bad habit of calling people "sweetie."

Obama then said: "I mean no disrespect, so I am duly chastened on that front."

—

Information from: WXYZ-TV, http://www.wxyztv.com
____________________________________

One might think Iraq, foreign policy, the economy and a few thousand real issues mght be more worthy of our attention.

I thought it was a real slip in professionalism on his part to call her "sweetie" in that context. That said, this is a real nothing unless it becomes a pattern. Like WE never say anything offhand and regret it two seconds later. Heh.

Not that I wouldn’t get a smile out of any American president telling, say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez "Straighten up or else, sweetie." 

Why is everyone so obsessed with the "sweetie" hooha? The man turned his back on a very important question - how is he going to save jobs in Michigan? He just left the people hanging and the reporter let him (and the tv audience) know that. What he’s doing now is damage control, but I think this will stick. If anything, it will stick with the workers he was visiting (who looked like they did not believe Obama in the first place).

Thank you for reporting this important story. It is not trivial as some commentators have said.  Obama’s comment, was not only inappropriate, it was blatantly sexist and patronizing.  Will he treat women that way if in office?I am amazed that Obama’s remark was not broadcast on major tv stations today.  Why is television media eager to address issues of racism but not sexism?    I am a democrat and was divided on who to vote for until now–I will not vote for any candidate who insensitively uses an historically derogatory name when addressing a profession person in a business setting, in any instance.  This shouldn’t be happening in 2008. 

  How about this…Pretend Hillary Clinton said it … and she said it to a black man …. and instead of "sweetie" she called him "boy".

How innocuous is it now?

I sure don’t know what it is like to be called "boy" in a professional situation, but I sure know what it’s liked to be called "sweetie".
 

While it’s slightly patronizing,  it could indeed just be a "bad habit", as he claims - rather than, as you’ve decided, an attempt to present himself as Average Joe Sixpack. By contrast, it’d be pretty hard to believe that McCain unconsciously uses "dog" as a form of address.

Can someone please educate me as to sweetie’s being an historically derogatory name? On par with, say, boy… Thank you.

P.S. This is an honest question. Nothing between or behind the lines.

There are several reasons for it being considered offensive in that context, Nihat. One, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetie">Wikipedia notes</a>, the word is a term of endearment, normally used as a nickname for a loved one. Directing the term toward a stranger is being presumptuously intimate. It’s like standing too close to someone, or hugging them without their permission.

Two, when not used as a term of endearment, it has been used by men to address women who are responsible for providing some service to them: waitresses, secretaries, etc. In that context, it’s either an assertion of dominance or superior social status, or it’s flirting; either would be inappropriate.

It’s also not a term that a man would ever uses to address another man. By using it in this context, Obama was calling attention to gender differences in a professional setting, which is generally considered unprofessional.

Thanks Pat, I appreciate the answers. Its being inappropriate is (was) clear to me, but derogatory wasn’t. This might be closest explanation for that: "it has been used by men to address women who are responsible for providing some service to them." Still quite at a different level than calling a black guy boy. Am I wrong?

Actually the first thing I thought about this was, what if it was McCain in Obama’s place? Or, what if the lady in question was a junior-high journalism club member on a practice run? I mean, it struck me as age-inappropriate to begin with.

First, let me say that I agree with Tully- given that Obama said this one time and quickly apologized to the reporter, I’m not going to make more of the incident than it was.

But I think Nihat’s question does bring us into interesting territory- is it really worse to make a demeaning comment to a black man (ie, ‘boy’) than it is to call a woman "sweetie" in a professional setting? I honestly don’t think so, yet it does seem that there’s a societal double standard which says it is.

I think that among the reasons for this is the fact that we mostly accept that there are distinct differences between the genders (in biology as well as temperament- generally speaking, of course) yet we don’t (and shouldn’t) accept that there’s a true biological distinction between the races which would reflect on a person’s job performance. Since various profesional environments ALWAYS involve some power plays, for certain people to put themselves at an advantage to others by assuming an air of superiority, it ought not to be acceptable for either gender or race to come into play. We haven’t been as stringent in our society, though, in calling people out on subtle sexism as we have on racism.
This is an odd argument for me to be making, incidentally, because I’m a conservative who does believe that gender roles are fairly distinct (that’s not to say that people who don’t fit the tightly defined roles shouldn’t be accepted- but I think we should acknowledge that the majority of males and females do have natural traits that fall in one direction or another.) I’ve never felt a part of the feminist movement because of this, and because I feel that feminist leaders have tried to make women into imitations of men instead of enabling women to display their unique feminine strengths more fully.
Yet I’m grateful to the women who pioneered for equal rights too, because however misguided I think they were, they certainly had the basic part right and I’ve benefitted greatly from their efforts. So I have no qualms about saying that the use of demeaning terms that imply superiority over women, or insert an inappropriate familiarity, should have absolutely no place in a professional setting- and I don’t see any light of day between that sort of thing and racial intonations. It’s both a success and shortcoming, I suppose, of feminism, that we don’t even notice those things or see the parallels with racism. Some might feel that the racial issue is more serious because of the history of slavery but then one only has to look at stuff like this- which feels like it came out of the Stone Ages but was actually from the 1930’s- to realize that women too have a recent history of a different form of oppression which was really not much better than slavery.

Now, I have to say there’s also a flip side to the  inappropriate use of demeaning terms by men toward women. As I said, I believe that this is an unacceptable form of power politics in the workplace- but just as inappropriate is the tendency for many ‘professional’ women today to use their sex to gain power over men. And that gets to my other criticism of the feminist movement- that they attempted to equalize the playing field by making it socially acceptable for women to assert power by the use of their gender instead of making it unacceptable for men (and women) to do so. I realize this wasn’t necessarily done by design- no one sat down and created a manifesto which said that women shall wear provocative clothing to work- I’m just pointing out that I believe that the way the feminist movement focused on women having equality in terms of sexual power (which was probably in large part just due to coincidence in timing of the sexual revolution) has had some unintended and unwelcome side effects.

This is a non-story because Obama has recognized it as inappropriate and apologized inmediately. He didn’t wait for a public outcry and apologized personally to the offended party. In short, he acted like and regular human being would when inadvertantly saying something inappropriate.

I totally agree about the double standard for racist/sexist remarks mind you, but my personal view is that the fact that sexist remarks aren’t treated the same way as racist remarks has an actual effect on their appropriateness. Put in another way, since society severely castigates anyone who would call a black man "boy" (as one Southern lawmaker recently had the misfortune to learn) then the judgement or attitudes of a person who still uses the term can be called  into question more easily (though to me that wouldn’t be anough, on it’s own as an isolated incident, to call someone racist). Since society is more loose with vaguely sexist language, then someone who uses it is less likely to be an actual sexist.

Anyone who thinks Obama looks down on women doesn’t know his wife, who in many ways reminds me of Hillary actually. I simply can’t see her marrying a guy who looks at a woman as lesser than, nor could I see a sexist marrying a high-powered VERY clearly non-docile woman.

There’s another factor to look at. It’s quite posible that Obama was just blowing the reporter off, and used the term to do so. McCain could just as easily do the same thing to a reporter younger than him (meaning almost anyone) by calling them "kid". If he were to do so I don’t think almost anyone would accuse him of ageism.

Personally, maybe because I’m younger, I don’t think I’d feel discriminated against as a woman if it were to happen to me. Oh I can imagine I might be offended, mostly for being belittled or brushed aside as inconsequential, but not really based on my gender. Obama apologized personally and inmediately (and he HAS talked about job issues at length in Michigan) which I think is enough. Wake me when he calls Clinton supporters "castratos in the eunuch chorus".

  What an absurd comparison! Sweetie, as has been pointed out, is most commonly a term of endearment. Calling a black nam boy never has been. Sweetie is also used by pretty much everyone…calling your friends homie or dog, I’m assuming, is not vernacular used everyday by the average house wife or 70 year old man, black or white. For Mcain to say either of those things would not be the same as Barack saying sweetie as I’m sure he probably uses the term often in real life.  It seems no matter what Obama does wrong from now on (he as far as I’m aware has not cited racism or pulled the race card against any of his opponents) has some people trying to find a reverse racist comparison. Where has race come into this? Where has the question of if it was offensive been raised? He admitted it’s inappropriate nature and apologised so why the clamour to PROVE how inappropriate it is with ridiculous imagined scenarios?  Here’s one for you…if Barack’s race doesn’t matter to you, as I’m sure you’ll all claim, then if he was a white man would the discussion have taken the direction it did, taking into account the fact the original story has nothing at all to do with race?  Some of you need to take a hard long look at yourselves.  

John and Liam don’t see anything wrong with calling a professional woman doing her job "Sweetie."That’s good enough for me!–Amy

Forget McCain using those terms for black reporters. Had he said "sweetie", there would be a whole political narrative around his being out of touch with modern sensibilities.   And the game continues.