He lost me at “sweetie.”
President Obama wielded the cringe-worthy “S” word at the first presidential debate. He wasn’t talking to Mitt Romney.
He also was not addressing some groupie or reporter — often one and the same — but his wife, Michelle.
“I just want to wish you, sweetie, a happy anniversary,” the president said to silent groans from assembled females. And me.
It was not the first sexist slur to spring from Obama’s lips. “Sweetie” is the man’s term of art whenever he feels the itch to cut down half the population.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama called a reporter from Detroit “sweetie” when she asked how he’d help auto workers, then refused to answer the question. At an earlier stop he told a fan, “Sweetie, if I start with a picture, I will never get out of here.” And to another, “Sweetie, if I start doing autographs . . . I am really late.”
Minor slips? Or a rude insight into the brain of Obama, a man as comfortable in the company of women as Tom Cruise?
Many in the media have made hay over Romney’s inartful reference to collecting “binders full of women” when talking about job candidates in the second debate. But when it comes to advancing the careers of women, Romney is the candidate who walks the walk.
While Obama patronizes with passionate and public displays of sweetie-isms, Romney is more at ease with women. As governor of Massachusetts, he led the nation in the hiring of female leaders — between 40 and 50 percent in his administration, compared with Obama’s 36 percent. He’d never publicly insult his wife.
In word and deed, Romney is the true feminist candidate.
We’re not stupid.
While Obama once held a commanding lead among the fair sex, now he’s panicking. A USA Today/Gallup poll of 12 crucial swing states last week cut Obama’s total among the estrogen set to 48 percent. Romney has 47. A Pew poll tied Obama and Romney among women at 47 percent.
This has nothing to do with the pink breast-cancer awareness bracelets Obama has cynically started to wear.
“Gov. Romney’s overriding commitment was not to self-promotion — as is so often the case for politicians — but for the people he served, and the people he served with,” Jane Edmonds, an African-American liberal Democrat who served on Romney’s Cabinet, wrote yesterday in an astonishing essay on CNN.com.
“He believes in empowering women. I would know, because I was one of those women he recruited and respected,” she wrote.
Said Lisa Schiffren, a senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, “It has been astonishing this year to watch the so-called progressive party — Democrats — woo women with offers of free contraception and abortion, which is pretty contemptuous if you think about it. It reduces women to their reproductive function.
“Meanwhile, Mitt Romney treats women like full adult citizens, by speaking to us about the economy, job creation, and national security. In Romney’s America, women can buy their own birth control, homes or baby food. And, by the way, Romney clearly has respect for families which choose to keep a parent at home taking care of children.”
As I’ve noted before, I am a pro-choice Democrat (seriously). I also won’t be bullied into believing that a Republican administration will end legal abortion with the appointment of anti-choice Supreme Court justices. I think abortion is here to stay.
And, like most women, I’m not a one-issue voter.
Democrats saw it as a gift when Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana made the awful comment that pregnancy resulting from rape is “something God intended.” (Romney disagrees.)
As reported by Slate.com, Mourdock’s Democratic challenger, Rep. Joe Donnelly, co-sponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act of 2011. It says — drumroll please — that life begins at conception.
No more distractions.
Women will decide the election. And Mr. President, we’re just not that into you.
Jessica’s wedding a Biel shame
There’s bad taste. And there’s celebrity toilet taste.
Guests at Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel’s $6.5 million Italian wedding — People magazine paid $300,000 for photographs — were treated to a video produced by a Timberlake pal. It starred homeless people and transsexuals unable to attend the 1 percenters’ nuptials.
A homeless man in LA slurs into the camera, “Jeez, I miss you so much. I wish I could be there.” A toothless man says, “I hope the wedding goes fine for you,” according to a video posted on Gawker.com. “My gift is in the mail.”
Rooms for guests, including Jimmy Fallon and Andy Samberg, went for more than $1,000 a night.
Justin and Jessica shouldn’t go on a honeymoon.
They should do community service.
Goetz takes aim at city street fairs
Iconic New Yorker Bernhard Goetz, the nebbishy Subway Vigilante who shot and wounded four men he thought tried to mug him in 1984, has a new cause. Banning street fairs.
“It was so bad Sunday, from 14th Street to 23rd, if there was a fire on any of those streets, the Fire Department wouldn’t be able to come,’’ said Bernie, posing for The Post with his pet squirrel and a T-shirt from the TV show “Dexter,’’ about a serial killer who murders people who deserve it.
Cleared of attempted murder in 1987, Bernie, now 64, did eight months in jail for illegal-gun possession, then ran for mayor in 2001 on an anti-circumcision, pro-vegetarian platform. He also rescued injured squirrels in Union Square Park.
I’d listen to him.
My tunnel vision: Keep old names
Late Gov. Hugh Carey was credited with saving New York from fiscal collapse. Now, precious taxpayer dollars are being spent to change road signs leading to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to read “Hugh L. Carey Tunnel,’’ as the span was renamed this week.
State taxpayers shelled out $4 million in 2008 to change signs to the Triborough Bridge to read “RFK Bridge.’’ A 2010 law estimated that changing tunnel signs would cost just $25,000 — an apparent low ball.
Name a nice building for Carey. It’s still the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to me.
Rite and wrong
Owners of an upstate farm refused to hold a wedding for two lesbians. Now, the gay couple has filed a first-of-its-kind discrimination complaint with the state Division of Human Rights. They should lose.
I accept gay marriage. But I can’t fathom why New York allows rabbis and priests to refuse to marry gays, yet two town clerks were forced to resign when their Christian faith forbid them to wed same-sex couples. Now this.
Tolerance should cut both ways.