Slate XX Factor v. Gov. Chris Christie: Was Comment Really an ‘Offensive Oral Sex Joke’? [VIDEO]

Slate's XX Factor blasted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Monday for what write Torie Bosch dubbed an offensive oral sex joke.

On Sunday, Jan. 8, Christie spoke at a campaign event in New Hampshire for GOP hopeful Mitt Romney, a candidate that Christie has openly endorsed. While speaking Christie on stage, joined by his wife and the Romneys, the governor got heckled by female audience members. Though the audio is unclear, the hecklers seem to say Christie kills jobs.

Christie then stopped his speech and answered the hecklers. Really? After laughter from the audience, Christie responded, You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain't going to be jobs, sweetheart. A recording of the rally was captured and uploaded onto Christie's official YouTube channel.

XX write Bosch's critique focused on the going down tonight.

She wrote: They seem to think his remark about going down is a zinger, something to be proud of, rather than recognizing it as flagrantly demeaning, even misogynistic. How would Christie have responded to male protesters saying the same thing? Probably not by changing the subject to what acts they perform in the bedroom. His handlers should be apologizing for the remark, not promoting it.

The article has since garnered mass attention. Not only have other news outlets covered it, but the article has over 1,000 Facebook likes, over 200 tweets and over 600 comments. Many of those comments were in disagreement with Bosch's standpoint.

What a joke! Are you people so confoundedly culturally illiterate that you don't understand going down in this case means you're going to be put out of commission? Which is pretty much what happened to the Occupiers when they were escorted from the room. Put down your copy of Feminine Mystique, get your noses out of Victorian fiction, and start paying attention to what's real. There's plenty of seriously nasty stuff in the world today that truly DOES threaten women (or womyn, if you prefer) without having to turn yourself into pretzels to be offended by this. Grow up, responded one.

Oral sex joke? Um...I understand that you might not be a fan of Christie, but this is a total (perhaps malicious) misrepresentation of what he said. Unfortunately, I think that your mind is in the gutter, and not his. Going down is a common phrase with multiple contexts, and there is a roughly 0% chance that Christie was using it in the way that you describe. Where is quality control on Slate? If I were you, I would remove this post before someone hits you with a libel suit. Or before it becomes obvious that you have an incomplete grasp of the English language...but it's clearly too late for that, wrote another.

Other scoffers took jabs at XX. My first thought on seeing this headline was hey, maybe Christie said something that was actually funny and those preening windbags over at xx with their famous lack of sense of humour [sic] couldn't handle it. Boy, was I disappointed, joked one.

Hmmph, I didn't know Mary Blige was sining [sic] about oral sex. Another lie from a lefty, no surprise here, wrote another.

Some commentators were more offended by the sweetheart comment than anything else. I found the sweetheart to be patronizing, dismissive, and demeaning. There simply wasn't enough context in the slang going down to make it sexual. I'm not biased enough to immediately assign the absolute worst connotation possible immediately. Contextual evidence suggests that what was going down was the opposing side's argument, as in, losing, responded another.

Some took the time to make fat jokes about Gov. Christie. Others poked fun at New Jersey.

View the video footage of Chris Christie at the New Hampshire rally. Do you think the comment was about oral sex?