Obama thinks Kamala Harris is kinda hot.

[Mr. Morden]

I don't think it's an "outrage", I just think it was kind of a dumb thing for Obama to say.  Basically for the reasons that Chait says.

[Mr. Morden]

Wait wait Obama actually apologized? People demanded he apologized for saying something positive?

Ugh...

It doesn't matter if it's "positive".  It's not appropriate to compliment people on their looks in a professional context, when talking about them in front of a large audience.  (See "benevolent sexism".)

Note: I'm not saying that Obama is sexist, or that this rises to the level of something that should be apologized for.  Just that Obama made a mistake by saying it, and it was a dumb comment.

[Mr. Morden]

Wait wait Obama actually apologized? People demanded he apologized for saying something positive?

Ugh...

It doesn't matter if it's "positive".  It's not appropriate to compliment people on their looks in a professional context, when talking about them in front of a large audience.  (See "benevolent sexism".)

Note: I'm not saying that Obama is sexist, or that this rises to the level of something that should be apologized for.  Just that Obama made a mistake by saying it, and it was a dumb comment.

So should some movie critic writing something along the lines of "Jennifer Lawrence looked so great in this movie" while writing about her Oscar winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook apologize to Jennifer Lawrence?

Again, I'm not saying that even the Obama case is something that should be apologized for.  Just that he shouldn't have said it in the first place.  Whether it's worth trying to clean it up after the fact is another matter.

With regard to your hypothetical, the norms within Hollywood are inevitably going to be somewhat different, because so many Hollywood actors/actresses are rather explicitly trading on their looks.  It also depends on the context within which a critic is writing the review.  If it's a random guy on a website that no one reads, the reviewer doesn't know Lawrence personally, and the chances of Lawrence herself ever reading the review are 0.001%, then the standards would be way more lax than if it's Roger Ebert.

But in general, yes, I could imagine some set of circumstances in which, even in Hollywood, something like this might not be kosher.  It depends on the context.  Certainly, in my field, if I was at a professional conference and was introducing a female speaker and complimented her looks while introducing her to a room full of hundreds of people, people would think it was inappropriate.  This case with Obama and Harris is perhaps one step removed from that, in that it's a fundraiser and so not part of Obama's "official" duties, but it's still essentially part of his job as a politician, so to speak.  So I think the same basic principle applies.

[Mr. Morden]

Well of course no one cares what a guy who writes for "a website no one reads" will say. But look at what magazines like Maxim say about actresses. The AV Club is a pretty respected review site and they comment on actors and actresses' attractiveness all the time. How many publications could review Mad Men for five seasons and never once bring up Christina Hendricks' or Jon Hamm's looks?

Well, as I said, the norms in Hollywood are different because you have so many people explicitly trading on their looks.  I could still imagine some kind of scenario in which it's inappropriate to bring up a Hollywood actress's looks, though the set of circumstances would be far more rare than for other professions.

As I said, it depends on the context.  In this particular context, I don't think Obama bringing up Harris's looks was appropriate.

[Mr. Morden]

Eh, Obama's got a boys' club mentality- this is nothing new.

Also this:

http://nymag.com/news/features/christine-quinn-2013-2/

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Again, is it the worst sin in the world?  No.  But Obama should know better.

[Mr. Morden]

I'm not against people talking about sexuality or complimenting each other on their looks.  I'm just against doing it in a professional environment, mixed in with some discussion of their overall job performance, in front of a crowd of hundreds of people.  I mean seriously, it's 2013.  This sort of thing doesn't fly anymore.  The reasons should be fairly obvious, but go read the quote from Chait in the OP for the basic reason as to why.

[Mr. Morden]

Again, if I were to introduce a female speaker at a professional conference in my field, and in the course of listing her accomplishments, said she was the hottest woman in the field, people would think it was pretty inappropriate.  Doesn't actually matter whether I'm her boss or not.  It's just inappropriate and unprofessional, because it reinforces the idea that women should be judged on their looks in the professional world, and that her looks are part of the reason why we should value her.

And of course whether Harris says she was offended or not has no bearing on whether Obama should have said it in the first place.  At the time Obama said it, he had no way of knowing what Harris's reaction was going to be!  (And in the very public context in which this occurred, it's possible that Harris didn't like it, but didn't say so because she didn't want to feed the political storm over a relatively minor transgression on Obama's part.)

[Mr. Morden]

So should Obama be only allowed to compliment men on their looks? He's an equal-opportunity complimenter here, so it doesn't seem as if he's judging Harris based on her looks anymore than the men of which previous posters have provided examples.

If he actually complimented absolutely everyone on their looks, regardless of what they look like, then it would be kind of weird, but people would learn to ignore it.  However, if he's only complimenting people who are, shall we say, "conventionally attractive", but not saying the same of a Barbara Mikulski for example, then yeah, it's definitely not appropriate.