Of COURSE he was speaking in Southern vernacular! Just imagine hearing that sentence in Clinton's Arkansas drawl and you'll get it. Are you sure you don't have anything more crucial to the state of the world to report, like the price of a haircut?

Bill Clinton is as calculated a politician as modern America has witnessed; for him to make a statement about the "boys", he surely had the cover story in hand from the moment he uttered the phrase. Talk about multiple "code"! If Hilary is appealing to some undercurrent of feminine kinship about treatment from the ol' boys network, as some journalists who closely follow the campaign claim, then who better to second that emotion than Bill? It's not like she doesn't have a point...

And now Obama's wife is telling African Americans that its "time to wake up." Its so nice to see the campaign won't be an invigorating clash of ideas after all. I mean things are so great in america we can afford the luxury of this sort of nonsence.

I hope Edwards get the nomination and tells them both to fuck off.

Bill Clinton is (or WAS) a LAWYER. So someone wants to tell me he was speaking with a "Southern vernacular"?!

Ok...so WHY was he NOT speaking that way in earlier speeches?

Come on...Bill's trying to help his wife any way he can.

I doubt the Clintons really meant to argue that Bill was calling Barack Obama boy "in the Southern vernacular of his Arkansas youth". Maybe it's time for the unidentified advisors to rethink that excuse?

her own staffers are using similar tactics to help her too!

Student given question to ask Clinton: I wasn't only one

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/11/13/student-given-question-for-clinton-i-just-want-honesty/

Every night in televisionland, Hillary Clinton is lambasted as being the enemy of the married white man, a cackler, a hand clapper. She is ALWAYS discussed, usually negatively, by men in terms of her gender. And yet the minute she or the people attached to her campaign so much as let slip the fact that she is a woman running against men, it's freak-out time. Watch out--the big vagina is trying to take over the world!!!

Hillary Clinton is a conservative Democrat. Many liberals, women included, strongly oppose her on purely bedrock principles: her weakness regarding opposing the war, over privacy rights, and over Bush anti-terror policies including torture. There are hundreds of reasons not to like her. But this constant harping on whether or not she's trying to use the girl-vs.-boy factor to her advantage is a pure nonsense issue.

I wish Dodd or Richardson received one-tenth of the press time that has been spent over Hillary's supposed gender exploitation.

Its so nice to see the campaign won't be an invigorating clash of ideas after all.

Frankly, Edwards, Obama and Clinton don't differ much in their ideas. Example: Obama's weekend appearance on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: A year ago, you were asked about Hillary Clinton. And this the exchange. “Where do you find yourself having the biggest differences with Hillary Clinton, politically?” Obama: “You know, I think very highly of Hillary. The more I get to know her, the more I admire her. I think she’s the most disciplined—one of the most disciplined people I’ve ever met. She’s one of the toughest. She’s got an extraordinary intelligence.” “She is—she’s somebody who’s in this stuff for the right reasons. She’s passionate about moving the country forward on issues like healthcare and children. So it’s not clear to me what differences we’ve had since I’ve been in the Senate.” Do you still hold to that? There aren’t any differences?

.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think that I, as I said earlier, I have admiration for Senator Clinton. I think she’s a fine public servant. The reason I’m running is because I think we’re in a unique moment in American history right now. The nation’s at war; our planet is in peril. We’ve got a series of decisions that we’re going to have to make. And I believe that I can more effectively than any other candidate in this race bring the country together, overcome some of the same old arguments that we’ve been having since the 1990s. I think I can reach out to Republicans and independents more effectively than any other candidate that...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21738432/

Perhaps these are just the sort of words an "inexperienced" candidate says about the establishment frontrunner, but they could just be taken at face value. There's a pretty decent Democratic field out there, and they're all addressing (more or less) healthcare reform, energy independence and ending the war. It's more about who you think can actually get things done and who has the force of personality to make it happen.

Aside to another scott: referring to a group as "the boys" and calling someone "boy" are so very much not the same thing.

Watch out--the big vagina is trying to take over the world!!!

Awesome. You rock.

Boys will be boys, and Bill is being, well, a good ol' boy, what with that southern vernacular thingie going on...and hey, I think it's really ok to refer to middle-aged men as boys...particularly when one of them is an African-American "boy"...

This is a nonstarter, and the Clinton campaign ought to drop it, immediately, and just zip it. What's better: that the candidates are going after Clinton because she's leading, or that the candidates are going after widdle ol' Hillary because they're big meany boys?

And did the motormouths on the Clinton campaign stop to consider how many questions she's going to get about this ridiculous NON-ISSUE during the next debate? Great going, people. Instead of a substantive discussion (well, as substantive as these things can be), we'll get an in-depth discussion of something that is incredibly trivial.

Meanwhile, Pakistan implodes, the price of oil skyrockets, people are getting forced out of their homes...but we'll discuss whether the "boys" are being mean to Hillary.

Yeah, sexism exists. Making it a campaign issue isn't going to make it go away. It's a much better narrative to say that Clinton is being attacked because she's the leader.

The vaulted messaging of the Clinton campaign has hit a big pothole with this stupidity.