I've tried to find video of the incident but apparently there isn't any - ? From the photo alone, I don't see any finger-wagging, I see a pointing finger, but I suppose someone who was there has accurately described it as wagging. Whatever; I can't believe this hue and cry, I really can't, any aspect of it. Don't get it at all.
This probably comes from living in a parliamentary system. Somebody wagging a finger at Stephen Harper wouldn't even get their picture taken. People wag their fingers at him in Parliament all the time. He's the head of government. Now the head of state, maybe a little different. If somebody wagged their finger at the Governor General, or the Queen, it might get noticed. The good part is that they don't do anything that might get a finger wagged at them, because as a rule they don't do anything at all. We don't have to "respect" Stephen Harper. He's right-wing dirt, and he is running the country with a 40% plurality of the popular vote, and huge numbers of people despise him, and if I got within wagging distance, I'd wag.
You have the problem of having a combined head of state and head of government. How to give a head of government precisely as much respect as they have earned, and still show respect for the head of state? I made the same observations here about Bush's second State of the Union address. 
(Here, we get the Speech from the Throne, which is the GG reading what the PM hands them to read, so everybody makes nice because it isn't actually Stephen Harper doing it, and then goes after him hammer and tongs in the House.)
Anyway. The article in the OP is pretty dumb and just not a well-written consideration of what issues there might be. Undoubtedly there are issues of that nature worth considering, I just don't really think they arise in this situation. You've got an apparently obnoxious and slightly loony woman behaving, at least so it's characterized, in an obnoxious way. She wouldn't have behaved that way if it had been Joe Biden she was talking to? Hm.
If anything, I'd say she's the one being stereotyped here. As witnessed by the propensity of some to call her a bitch, etc. I wonder: if she'd just bombed Iraq, would she be "a bitch"? Just wondering whether the combination of "unladylike" and actually rather stereotypical bad-female behaviour she was caught on camera engaging in has more to do with what she's being called.
My inability to understand the outrage generally is probably hindering me here. I can't tell whether it's outrage because anybody would behave that way to the President, or outrage because she's white, or outrage because he's black, or outrage because she's female ... because I can't see what the hook is to hang the outrage on in the first place. She wagged her finger at the President. BFD.
Now, here is how to show disrespect to a head of government!
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/07/20/the-short-underwhelming-history-of-pie-throwing/jean-chretien/
The guy who pied the Prime Minister got 30 days. Mind you, that was before we discovered terrorism ...
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