During yet another acidentally recorded conversation, Jerry Brown is involved in a rant about Meg Whitman and an aide calls her a whore. Jerry lets it go (kind of a tacit acknowledgement in my opinion) and simply continues his rant.
I live in Florida and it’s getting pretty red here. I think something like this would be significant to our voters. But California is still pretty blue. Whitman is down about 7% in the race. Is this a game changer? Or will Californians let it fade into the background noise?
Whitman’s spending $450,000 of her own money a day to buy the governorship. She’s still trailing, and the best she can do is cling to a one-off private remark by someone who is not Brown? Things are not looking good for the gal who treats the governor’s job like a whore.
Using women’s sexuality to demean them is so pervasive and accepted in our culture that most people won’t even get why this is at all remarkable and will turn the situation into one about a whiny, “bitchy” woman who can’t handle the pressures involved in politics. Non-event in the big scheme of things, certainly not one that’s going to help Whitman.
That’s hardly exclusive to women; ask Bill Clinton.
(Yes, perjury was the real underlying issue in that case, but the bulk of Republican attacks in the court of public opinion were sneers at Clinton for being a sleazy pervert horndog.)
In context, it’s rather clear that “whore” is being used in the non-sexual sense of someone who will shamelessly pander (again, in the non-sexual sense).
I was pretty sure prior to reading this that the word ‘whore’ was being used in the political sense, and after reading the posted transcript I agree with Steve MB.
That doesn’t make it ‘OK’ but it does give some context to the comment.
I don’t think Whitman will be able to buy the office.
While I understand and do take your point, I also think we have some apologetics going on here.
You are construing the word in its connotative sense and we have all seen that, most acceptably in unambiguous terms: “He’s just an advertising whore.”
However the denotative sense of the word is highly charged emotionally. In the Real World, when referring to a woman in almost *any *context as a whore, well, you’re usually going to have an interview with the HR Director.
I think Meg Whitman will use this as cannon fodder to paint Brown in a *very *negative light. Were I Meg Whitman, I’d start running ads that say, “I want to create jobs in California. And Jerry Brown calls me a whore.”
Negative? Oh, yeah. Effective. Very likely.
The question is: will it be enough to close the gap?
It’s an interesting question. I would like to think that Californians care enough about the Governor race that they won’t be swayed by something as meaningless as this, but I am not really sure.
The other factor you have to consider is that Whitman has already gone about as negative as you can possibly go with her campaign ads and has been flooding the California airwaves with them for a solid month and Brown’s lead has only grown in that time. I don’t know that this will be more than a blip.
Whom does this sway? Did he get on the stump & say, “That whore!”? If it’s a private conversation, well, who doesn’t expect this kind of talk about the other side?
If she’s down 4 or 5 or 7 percent and falling? No. I haven’t followed this race very closely but given the caveats on this remark - Brown was not the speaker, the meaning is not clear, and enthusiasm is low - I don’t see it helping her much. And not nearly enough to close that gap. I think it’s unbelievable that Jerry Brown is probably going to be governor of California. It’s amazing that anybody can get re-elected to a job he last held 25-plus years ago, nevermind that people wrote Brown off as a nut a long time ago.
Crazy isn’t it? But if anything he is better qualified to lead California now than he was then. He isn’t really considered a nut anymore, at least not in California. He has continued to be part of California politics for almost the entire time serving as Mayor and Attorney General, and if there is anyone who can navigate the stupid and broken political machine that is California it’s him.
Beyond the fact that I dislike her politics and the way she has conducted the campaign both against Brown and previously against her Rupublican opponent in the primaries, I honestly do not believe that an outsider will be anything other than totally ineffectual as Governer right now. Arnold has tried and failed to get anything fixed, and I really do think he has been trying.
I also believe that Brown has California’s best interests at heart and is legitimately interested in fixing the broken machine.
In a private conversation, a campaign aide called an opponent a bad name! Stop the presses!
Whitman is desperate. Despite spending $100 million of her own money, she was only running neck and neck with Brown - before the housekeeper scandal. Her campaign admits it needs a good chunk of the Latino vote to win, and she tossed it away.
The problem, according to an analysis I read in the paper today, is not that she had hired an illegal, and not that she was too stupid to check, and not even that she fired her. It was that when she fired her she refused to help, and said I don’t know you and you don’t know me. That reenforces the stereotype of the heartless CEO who crushes the little guy. Given the lack of knowledge of her positions, character is very important, she ruined hers.
One of Whitman’s campaign positions is that pension reform is needed to fix the CA financial situation. The allegation is that she would exempt the police pensions in exchange for an endorsement. Brown (in the tape) says that Whitman would cut a deal and that he wont because their [the police pensions] are part of the problem too.
I say this whole “whore” thing makes Brown look better. The story isn’t that a candidate called another candidate a name when he thought he wasn’t being recorded. I think the real story is the substance of why he [his aid really] would call her a whore. Is she whoring out for the endorsement? Seems like it.