Redlining on the Gaffe-O-Meter

Senator Barak Obama recently created a flap when he impatiently addressed a persistent woman reporter as “sweetie”. This is not the first time that the Illinois Senator and Democratic presidential candidate has used a condescending epithet in talking to women reporters, but you won’t hear about it in the mainstream media.

Fortunately, the Press Association Covering Obama has been collecting these gaffes and is able to present other terms Senator Obama has used in addressing women (both reporters and questioners in the audience). They include:

1) Toots;

2) Baby doll;

3) Little girl;

And,

4) You dimpled blob of quivering cellulite.

Senator Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, moved quickly to try and capitalize on these heretofore unpublicized gaffes at a major press conference at Columbia University, but substantially undermined her strategy by unaccountably departing from her prepared comments and imitating the calls of various New York waterfowl. Although this episode led to considerable consternation among Senator Clinton’s campaign staff, several ornithologists in the audience said afterwards that she gave a very creditable imitation of the bufflehead (Bucephala albeola), the surf scoter (Melanitta perspicillata), and the red-throated loon (Gavia stellata). The Obama camp, however, was quick to criticize her greater scaup (Aythya manila), intimating that the extent of her knowledge of bird calls was more apparent than real, “just like her knowledge of foreign policy.”