It may be April Fools Day, but Sen. Barack Obama was acting like it was Valentine’s Day. He was in full charm mode while touring the Tama Manufacturing plant, a JC Penny supplier of made-in-the-USA clothing in Allentown.
Obama was especially flirtatious today, winking and grinning at the female workers who were swooning behind their cell phone cameras…
During the 25-minute tour, Obama called a woman ‘sweetie,’ and thanked her in spanish…
But Obama lavished compliments on dancewear manufacturer Marisa Cerveris, who gave him a black and pink leotard for Malia and Sasha, explaining she was once in the New York City ballet.
“You look like you might be a dancer,” Obama told her, later adding: “You’re big time.”
“You’re gorgeous,” he told Cerveris after glancing at one of her old ballet photos.
Sen. Barack Obama approached first overflow in the parking lot outside of the Scranton town hall, and immediately went to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore who was wearing a Hillary Clinton button. She held an Obama button in her hand, and he asked what he needed to do to get her to wear his instead of his rival’s.
“What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he asked. He then conceded, keeping with his flirty trend of the day (see earlier report), “I’ll give you a kiss.”
Howard Kurtz interviewing Ron Suskind, author of Confidence Men, 9/19/11:
Is the White House a difficult place for women to work and feel comfortable?
There is no doubt that the White House, through 2009 into 2010, based on my reporting, was a difficult workplace for women…It was at least in significant measure subordinate to wider management problems in the building. People naturally gathered the way they have gathered for some time, the men-with-the-men and women-with-the-women model. People were often left out of meetings and they felt aggrieved, many of the women did, especially when they were meetings that were all men.
Friction about the roles of women in the Obama White House grew so intense during the first two years of the president’s tenure that he was forced to take steps to reassure senior women on his staff that he valued their presence and their input.
At a dinner in November 2009, several senior female aides complained directly to the president that men enjoyed greater access to him and often muscled them out of key policy discussions.
Obama at the G8 summit, July 2009:
What’s that you say?
Not fair? Out of context? Manipulative?
Well, how about that.
P.S. In other news: Yesterday was Herman Cain’s biggest fundraising day to date.
