It seems like a quirk in the rules make it easier to smear a group than to criticize Obama

I'll give you an example:

There was a thread that called Obama's foreign policy approach towards Netanyahu "sissy" --it very clearly called his approach that word and did not Obama a "sissy". Even the locking message from the moderator said the reason was the way Obama's *policy* was characterized.

About the same time, there was a thread about a rather weird incident involving that riskee' female "reporter" in the locker room. The thread posed the question and was largely about whether a woman "invited sexual harassment" based on what she wears. It was not locked.

As i understand it, to lock a thread requires consensus of some sort and what seems to have happened was that the moderators were able to agree that it was not okay to call Obama's policy "sissy" but they could not agree that it was inappropriate to have a thread that speculates that women could invite an illegal activity. While the Brazilian reporter story was an oddball, the topic as presented was sexist in that it posed that one could invite an illegal activity.

But the point overall is that for whatever reason, a word about a policy got a thread locked and a thread noted by a number of people to be sexist was not --in fact, it was moved to the sports forum.

Why is it appropriate to lock a thread that calls a policy an ill-advised word and not appropriate to lock a thread that numerous people think is sexist? Also, does the requirement for consensus mean that men who are moderators can veto whether a thread is locked on the basis of being sexist...or white moderators can veto whether a post is locked because it's seen as anti-black? And so forth?

The post probably would have been permitted if it referred to Obama as "weak" or some such thing. So the issue is not the substance of the criticism, but the use of a specific word.

As for the other thread, I don't have it in front of me but I have a vague recollection. The difference is that it is really easy to come to consensus on forbidden words like "sissy" -- either they are in the post or they are not. But on posts where the objection is over substance, it is much, much harder to come to consensus. Especially when the intent of posting such a thread is to condemn a particular way of thinking rather than agree with it. (Admittedly, I do not remember the intent of the OP.)