Day: 10/8/2010

Is Meg Whitman A Whore? A Whore? A WHORE?

Posted by on October 8, 2010 at 4:57 pm. 2 Comments :

Reports have surfaced today that a member of Jerry Brown’s campaign staff inquired as to whether their opponent, Meg Whitman, could be portrayed as a “whore” due to her doling out positions in exchange for endorsements. The comment about Meg Whitman being a whore came during a voice mail that somehow continued to record after Brown thought the phone call was disconnected.

The recording picked up a private conversation about whether Meg Whitman could be regarded as a whore due to her promising a police union official that she would protect pension benefits if he threw the union’s support to her campaign. This is how the Brown campaign addressed the whore subject:

BROWN: I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be – that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give them, will cut them a deal, but I won’t.
AIDE: What about saying she’s a whore?
BROWN: Well, I’m going to use that. It proves you’ve cut a secret deal to protect the pensions.

The acknowledgment by Brown that he might use Whitman’s willingness to sell her positions for an endorsement (i.e. be a political whore) has generated significant buzz in the media. It also generated a response from Whitman’s camp who were critical of Brown for not repudiating the staffer who suggested calling Whitman a whore:

“The use of the term ‘whore‘ is an insult to both Meg Whitman and to the women of California,” said Sarah Pompei, a campaign spokeswoman. “This is an appalling and unforgivable smear against Meg Whitman.”

Of course everyone knows that Whitman isn’t really a whore, but this dialog can’t do her much good. For it’s part, the Brown campaign apologized for the use of the term whore:

“This was a jumbled and often inaudible recording of a private conversation,” Steven Glazer, Brown’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “We apologize to Ms. Whitman and anyone who may have been offended.”

Whitman may be justified in complaining about the language used by Brown’s aide. I’m sure she doesn’t like being characterized as a whore. However, in context, the conversation showed that Whitman was indeed offering a special treat in exchange for something of value – an endorsement. It also showed Brown acting with integrity in that he was unwilling to waver in his position with regard to the union pension just to win their support.

It seems to me that if Whitman continues to harp on the slur of having been called a whore, she will only be reinforcing the notion that she is a whore. Every time her campaign complains about being called a whore the voters will be reminded that she offered up her position on union pensions for a “fee.”

Does Whitman really want to cement the notion into the public mind that she can be had for a price? Because that’s exactly what she will be doing if she prolongs this controversy over a candid campaign discussion that just happened to wonder if her being a whore could be used to their political advantage.

If I were her I would drop the whore business ASAP. She already asked for and received an apology. The only thing she can accomplish now by pursuing it is to make sure that people continue to associate her with being a whore. And since it isn’t much of a stretch to regard any politician as a whore, it can’t possibly do her any good.

p.s. I apologizing for using the word “whore” eighteen times in this article. That’s a whore lot more than I should have.

p.p.s. Make that twenty times. Although that last one may have been a typo.

Bonus From the Archives: This may be a good time to revisit the Motor City Jackass and Tea Party hero Ted Nugent, who said:

“I was in Chicago last week I said, ‘Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?’ Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, ‘Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.’ Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.“

Funny…I don’t think I’ve heard Meg Whitman, the GOP, or any of the conservative establishment repudiate these remarks. Yet Nugent continues to be invited to Republican and Tea Party affairs.

Rupert Murdoch Epitomizes Hidebound Culture

Posted by on October 8, 2010 at 1:23 pm. 1 Comments :

Dateline: Wall Street Journal, October 8,2010.
If Schools Were Like ‘American Idol’ . . .
BY RUPERT MURDOCH

Over the past few years, I have often complained about a hidebound culture that prevents many newspapers from responding to the challenges of new technology. There is, however, another hidebound American institution that is also finding it difficult to respond to new challenges: our big-city schools.

Is that so? Rupert Murdoch’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal is apparently his prescription for improving America’s ailing schools. Unfortunately, he has locked up his own opinion behind a paywall that prevents anyone who has not subscribed to his service from reading it. All you get is two paragraphs that contribute nothing to the public discourse on education.

The irony is that while he is complaining about a hidebound culture, he is simultaneously demonstrating it. The concept of erecting paywalls to secure content online is firmly rooted in the past. Modern media theory recognizes that certain types of information cannot be corralled and apportioned for fees. That is particularly true for news which no entity can own.

What Murdoch has succeeded in proving here is that his paywall not only fails to produce revenue, it suppresses the information he intends to distribute. And he ties it to the success of his own American Idol, a television program that, unlike his newspapers, can be received entirely free of charge. The result of this illogic is that he is making himself less prosperous and less influential at the same time. And he is doing nothing to help our educational system or the young people who rely upon it. Nice work, Rupert.

Fox News Reporter Charles Leaf Arrested For Sexual Assault

Posted by on October 8, 2010 at 9:52 am. 5 Comments :


Alleged Child Molester Identified as Charles Leaf, Alleged Reporter for Fox News

Charles Leaf of Fox News is being held in New Jersey on charges of aggravated sexual assault on a four year old girl. He has been an investigative reporter with WNYW/Fox5 in New York and has also been featured on the Fox News Channel.

This is not the first time Leaf has been accused of assault. He was previously alleged to have assaulted a councilwoman in Mobile, Alabama, where he was working at the time for a local news outlet. There were no criminal charges filed in that case, but there was reportedly a substantial settlement paid by the station.

I profiled Leaf in September in an article titled, “Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter.” The article details his aggressive, dishonest, and unprofessional behavior in covering real estate developers associated with the Park51 project in Manhattan (the non-mosque that is not at ground zero). The coverage, featured prominently on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program (as well as The O’Reilly Factor, The Fox Report, Fox & Friends, On the Record, and Geraldo at Large) was based entirely on innuendo and unsupported, sensationalist, allegations. I described his reports at the time as not even providing enough evidence to start a rumor:

First Leaf conducted an ambush interview on real estate developer, Sharif El-Gamal, that yielded nothing to support his contention that El-Gamal was corrupt. Leaf merely insinuated that something must be wrong because El-Gamal was a waiter eight years prior to investing in the Park51 project. The implication being that anyone who starts a small business, works hard for nearly a decade, and achieves success, is deserving of suspicion.

Then Leaf turned his focus to investor Hisham Elzanaty. Again, Leaf ambushed Elzanaty without acquiring any usable information. The only purpose for Leaf’s ambushes is to suggest something sinister when the target declines to talk to him. To that end Leaf made wild accusations about Elzanaty’s contribution to a Muslim charity. As it turns out, the charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was later investigated for ties to Hamas. But that wasn’t until two years after Elzanaty’s donation, and the feds acknowledged that contributors would not have known about the organization’s relationship with Hamas as it was deliberately concealed.

Both of these reports failed completely to produce evidence of any wrongdoing. They were exercises in insipidness and their only purpose was to insinuate and intimidate. They were utterly unprofessional and potentially libelous. Yet Leaf exalted himself as if he had exposed Watergate. And Fox News (particularly Megyn Kelly) went along by broadcasting Leaf’s empty innuendos and affirming the unsupported conclusions.

Megyn Kelly hosted Leaf on several occasions despite never having a verifiable story to report. This is further evidence of my contention that Kelly is at least as bad as Glenn Beck. It will be interesting to see if Kelly, or anyone at Fox, follows up on their new star reporter by covering his arrest. So far, the only comment from Fox is from a spokesman at the local Fox5 station who said that they are aware of the situation and are reviewing it.

Other Fox News perverts include Bill O’Reilly who paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a former producer whom he sexually harassed, and Dick Morris who was caught sucking the toes of a prostitute whom he let listen in on phone calls to President Clinton.

Is anyone taking odds on when Glenn Beck’s mug shot will rocket through the blogosphere?