MADDOW:  I think the beginning of the speech was (pause) a controversial way to start, honestly, talking, you know, “the girl… a girl,” leading with this long story about him being attracted to an unnamed girl and thinking about whether he was starting something he didn’t finish. Uh, building her whole political story for the whole first half of the speech around her marriage to him.  I think, you know, unless there were worries that this is gonna be too feminist a convention, that was not a feminist way to start.

RUSH:  Let me explain.  She’s reacting as a woman of today would.  “Girl?  We’re not girls!” But back in 1970, ’60, ’65, ’70, it was common for the girls to call themselves “the girls.” The wives would call and say, “Hey, yeah, the girls and I are gonna go to a club. The girls and I…” And the husbands called ’em “the girls.”  It was loving; it was affectionate. It certainly wasn’t insulting.  Today, it is.  You don’t you don’t call ’em “babes.” You don’t call them “chicks.” You don’t call ’em…

Well, certain of them you can, but “woman.”  They are a woman or women.  They are not girls. Particularly adults of accomplishment, they’re not girls.  That bite is interesting to me for that reason, to show the generational shift.  It was never an insult. Calling them “girls” was never an insult, but it became one and a lot of men did not understand it, and said, “Get me outta here.”