(Anonymous)
Bristol being in the news NOW is legitimate, because she's doing things in her own right. For a while, she was not a public figure, she was the daughter of a public figure. I'm a little afraid of what's going to be said of the Obama girls when they're a little older -- the Bush twins were twenty and were branded as public drunkards, Chelsea Clinton was openly mocked on her appearance when she was 12...the press is really mean to girls in the White House. (There hasn't been a male child in the White House since probably JFK Jr., if I'm doing the math right -- I know Jimmy Carter had three sons, but they were on their own by the time he was in the White House, leaving the attention for Amy.)
I don't think "asshole" is a gendered word, but it's an implicitly gendered word -- it's rare to call a woman an asshole. Maybe "dickhead" is a better example -- a word that is an insult, is usually only applied to a man, has a sexual connotation, but is no longer about the sexual. Although I personally don't do this, I think that's the semantic drift of the word. Though in context, Letterman was wrong and being icky.
I don't think "asshole" is a gendered word, but it's an implicitly gendered word -- it's rare to call a woman an asshole. Maybe "dickhead" is a better example -- a word that is an insult, is usually only applied to a man, has a sexual connotation, but is no longer about the sexual. Although I personally don't do this, I think that's the semantic drift of the word. Though in context, Letterman was wrong and being icky.