At Corrente, Xenophon offers "How pissed are white women?" which is nothing but an ahistorical perspective on this (or any) presidential election which allows Xenophon to target and slime White women -- long a favorite practice of Xenophon.
May 20th, Xeonphon was flying the ignorance with a post entitled "Ain't that a Bitch: the return of racist misandry or the 'Angry Black Man'" which -- like a lot of X's posts, opens by insisting he's not that wild about Barack. But he has plenty of time to slam those outraged that Barack would refer to women (including a reporter) as "Sweetie". Xenophon rages: "You got your panties in a bunch because somebody called you sweetie? *@#&! Nobody said a mumbling word about Michelle Obama." "Michelle Obama" is linkable so we clicked to see what sexist thing had been said about Michelle?
The link takes you to Jenny Booth's "Barack Obama warns off Tennessee GOP from smearing his wife Michelle" (Times of London). Read the article, you'll never find any sexist attack on Michelle referred to in it nor will you find a smear. Michelle Obama made an idiotic statement about being proud of her country for the first time. That's public record. The full public record would note that she stated it more than once and that the damning video of her statements is when she's dressed in dark clothes (with hair askew), hunched over to the microphone, not when she's wearing her more elegant wardrobe.
"Sweetie" is offensive. Michelle's remarks are offensive. But she said them (more than once). To equate the two explains just how out of touch Xenophon is. And notice that in one case (Obama's use of sweetie) no one should be offended ("panties in a bunch") but in another (Michelle's own words being used in a GOP advertisement) Michelle's words being used are just blatant sexism!
No, it's someone making an idiotic statement in public and being recorded (several times) doing so. "Words matter," says Barack. And what Xenophon seems especially ignorant of is that grassroots feminists have been pissed at Michelle since November when she began insisting that Hillary wasn't qualified for the White House because she couldn't 'run her own house.' That attack has never been forgotten and goes a long ways towards explaining why the latest Michelle Obama (Laura Petrie-ville) doesn't have a great deal of support from grassroots feminists.
Fortunately, Sarah, Lambert, tnjen, Valhalla, caseyOR, herb the verb, hipparachia and TonyRz are among the ones calling the 'hypothesis' of the post out. bringiton advises, "Heads up: Don't get personal. That was mean and unacceptable."