"And, surely, I think people have taken this way out of context, and actually, to be venomous. Obviously they've hurt their little feelings seeing sexual assault when nothing was mentioned of it. The only mention of that came from some posters. I've never implied that at all. This has gotten itself out of hand. I'm sorry that it's happened. But this venomous stuff is just unbelievable."

James was critical of those who linked the photo to sexual assault.

"Their concern is to save all women somewhere from something. They probably see buffaloes in the clouds too. I have no control what they see or how they interpret it. I know my intent and it was none of that. It wasn't meant to be malicious or derogatory in any way. What I said wasn't what they heard," James said. "Everybody's skin is really thin. I don't know what to attribute that to. Everybody's such a victim now That's the first place they want to jump to, 'Oh it's not your fault, you're a good kid and you should've won that swimming meet and whatever.' And people being coddled way too much. "

This is a perfect example of our national divide.

My initial reaction was that the cesspool of behavior surrounding presidential politics just got a lot more disgusting with this photo.