... and consider you my geeky internet writer crush on most days, I can't help but think bad things need to happen to this woman.

The issue that most affects me - and I may very well be using my emotions instead of my brain - is that an ADULT did this to a CHILD. People act despicably to each other all day every day on the internet, but there is a fundamental difference between adults tormenting other adults, minors tormenting other minors and an adult tormenting a minor.

You can't swing a dead pixel in the introwebs without hitting a douchebag with a chip on his/her shoulder who will act like an utter and complete ass just because they can get away with it. Adults (for the most part) participate in interactive web groups knowing full well that doing so provides a pretty good chance of encountering more than a handful of said douchebags, and ideally, we're mature enough to handle it. Kids, I imagine, are likely creative and persistent in their online attacks on each other, too, but this was a long term plan to deceive and torment this girl orchestrated by an adult. If that's not criminal, then it darned well SHOULD be.

Regardless of whether the charges can stick, I hope she is sitting awake in a panic every night, thinking she's going to spend twenty years in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

I'm an Obama supporter. I don't speak up a lot here, but I read every day. I know there are some folks who post here who support Obama who lack grace. There are a handful of Clinton supporters who I'd call equally tactless. Politics certainly can bring out the worst in all of us. I think I can speak on this article, however, and I love a good challenge.

I do believe "sweetie", "honey", "baby", etc. can be used as dismissive terms, and have been on the receiving end of a sleazy "sweetie" or two in my day. What's important, however, is context. Mr. Obama, as Ms. Traister acknowledged, is not a man that could be painted as sexist in most circumstances. Yes, a particularly vocal and tasteless segment of his supporters clearly have some issues with women, but Obama is not his supporters, any more than he is Rev. Wright, Ayers or the tooth fairy.

I don't want to go all Brightstar here, Heaven forfend, but I don't think if Clinton called another woman "sweetie" she'd be called a lesbian. It is more acceptable, it seems, for women to use terms of endearment than men. For example, Tina Fey's "bitch is the new black" comment - what would the outcome been if a male comedian had said it? Howard Stern? Dennis Miller? Bill Maher? (Steven Colbert might be able to pull it off, but he's special.) Again, it's all about the context, right?

My oh so humble opinion is that Mr. Obama made a slip of the tongue when he drew a blank on the reporter's name with no malice either intentional or sub-conscious. He apologized quickly and like Ms. Traister said, sincerely and graciously. While I agree it might mean "something" there is very little in this election season that has not been blown completely and utterly out of proportion. It's blip or bombshell with both the MSM and the online world, and much like the "racist" shitstorm following Clinton right now, continually connecting Obama to the label of sexist is bound to lead to months of endless "Obama the Sexist" noise that will drown out other very critical issues in this campaign and the following election. Is calling a reporter "sweetie" worthy of the coverage it's getting?

....is a darned unfair way to paint her. She's fought hard, she's faced constant opposition and been the recipient of more than a few unfair/untrue slams - so more or less like any other candidate to try and achieve our nation's highest office in the past couple of decades. Making her (assumed upcoming) concession to Obama the result of people being mean to her because she's a woman does ALL of us a disservice.

As a woman, I've been very pleased to see her get this far - even though she's not my first choice. But wouldn't our ancestors who fought so diligently for the rights we American women have now have been pleased to see that voting as a feminist in the 21st Century truly means picking the cadidate that best fits our vision of the president, REGARDLESS of race or gender?

As for the sexism in America, I call phooey. Yes, maybe there are some in this country who still believe women are inferior to men. However, American women are not stoned in honor killings, not forced to wear garments that obscure our entire person, not reproductively controlled by our government, not raped by occupying forces in our country, not sold into sexual slavery as a common occurance..... I'm sorry, but when I look at the way women in the rest of the world are marginalized, abused and eliminated in the name of misogyny, I have a hard time getting my blood pressure up when an American woman is called a bitch.