Posted on 10/12/2010 9:42:26 PM PDT by kristinn
California gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown debated tonight at Dominican University in San Rafael. The moderator was Tom Brokaw who raised the 'whore' comment with Brown.
Video of the exchange at Bay Area NBC
Transription by Kristinn.
BROKAW: Mr. Brown you did attempt to reach out to the police union. The telephone message was left on. It's now a notorious part of this campaign. In which somebody in your campaign referred to Ms. Whitman as a "whore." A campaign spokesman then described that as "salty language" and apologized after a fashion. We've heard no outrage from you about the use of that kind of language which to many women is the same as calling an African-American the n-word. Have you been in charge of the investigation in your campaign to find out who is responsible for using that phrase?
BROWN: I don't agree with that comparison, number one. Number two, this is a five week old private conversation...
WHITMAN: Oooohh.
BROWN: ...picked up on a cellphone, uh, with a garbled transmission. Very hard to detect who it is. This is not, I don't want to get into the term and how it's used. But I will say the campaign apologized promptly and I affirm that apology tonight.
BROKAW: You're repeating it to Ms. Whitman?
BROWN: Yes I am. I do. I, it's unfortunate. I'm sorry it happened. I apologize.
WHITMAN: So Jerry, it's not just me, it's the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks. That's not what California is about. It is not our better selves. And I, um, think people know exact...I think every Californian, and especially women, know exactly what's going on here. And that is a deeply offensive term to women.
BROWN: Well, can I just interject? Have you chastised your chairman, Pete Wilson, who called Congress "whores" to the public sector unions?
WHITMAN: You know better than that Jerry. That's a completely different thing. The fact you are defending your campaign...
AUDIENCE: Heckles Whitman.
WHITMAN: The fact you are defending your campaign for a slur and, um, you know, a personal attack on me I think it's not befitting of California. It's not befitting of the office that you're running for.
BROWN: It's unfortunate. Private conversation. I'm not even sure it's legal because you have to get the consent of all the parties and there's lots of people talking so, I again, Ms. Whitman I'm sorry it happened. That does not represent anything other than things that happen in a campaign. But the issue there of course is pension reform and the fact that you got the endorsement of that union. I didn't because they said I'd be too tough on unions and public employee pensions and I'll take that.
WHITMAN: So that's actually...
AUDIENCE: Cheers Brown.
BROKAW: Admonishes audience to keep quiet.
Tape ends.
Sounds like there were a lot of Brown supporters in the audience.
Good transcript.
Dubious title.
Brown and Brokaw both lose.
I'm shocked!
Regards,
TS
We have a terrible deficit problem in California, a very high unemployment rate and they waste time on this triviality.
For sure.
The audience cheering Brown. What a hole CA has become.
It’s late on both coasts now.
An ad against Whitman say she was paid $120 million shortly before 10% of the employees at eBay were laid off.
Does anyone have any information on this?
I need an answer to respond to someone that says this ad has changed their vote away from Whitman.
Sounds like Brokaw did a good job.
Nice title for thread.....(golf clap)
On this segment he did. I haven’t watched the other parts.
The discussion about calling her a whore is a triviality, but the pension reform issue is huge. I support Whitman (and Fiorina) with less reservation than most here because I think it is as good as we are going to get in CA for the time being. In this case it looks like Whitman did sell out to the unions, and that will make it harder to deal with the massive budget problem.
It’s unseemly for politicians to be calling one another whores. However, I have to admit that I’m not too surprised that many in the public find it hard to generate sympathy for any of these folks. People are really fed up this year with anybody who looks like a politician. It’s gotta be tough out there for all of them.
“Sounds like there were a lot of Brown supporters in the audience.”
It was held at a university - what do you think?
If the pension problem is so big, how can you vote for someone that cut a deal with the largest source of the problem? I agree with you it is not a good choice this election. I’m most likely going to sit this one out.
Jerry blows a whore, is that legal?
Brokaw tried his hardest to make the geriatric hopped-up Brown look a little less embalmed than usual.
It sounds to me like Brown blew Whitman away. A wise handler would have told Whitman to stay above it all and have no comment lest she be viewed as insincerely milking the victim role. She really stepped in it. She should have kept her stinking mouth shut. “Whore”. Big deal..
brown sux.
Well, I just got the double meaning in the title. Shows how slow I am.
Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, Meg Whitman, Pete Wilson... all political whores. Whores of a feather...
Brown is one of many reasons that CA is a cesspool these days! It’s mind boggling how voters think out there. Nobody seems to learn from their mistakes.
It sounds like Whitman has milked the “whore” comment for all it’s worth. At least it got that idiot Gloria Allred and her illegal alien client off the front page. Now, it’s time for Whitman to “man up” and move on. If the people of California think Brown will make a better governor than Whitman they could care less what she was called and vote for him. Meg better demonstrate why she would be a better governor, period.
Really? He blew a whore?
/S
You want to see slow, I look like I’m in slow motion chasing my two year old.
I thought all those decades of experiance were to my advantage. It seems instead that youth will be served.
Yeah, when the whole lot of them work in a bordello, the label kinda loses its sting, doesn’t it.
Brown initiated the call, Brown himself forgot to hang up the call. How can he blame others by calling it a "picked up.. cell phone call?"
Also, Brown is the Attorney General of California. Why is he saying that he's "not even sure it's legal?" Maybe he should have kept his law license current before stealing the AG job?
-PJ
I don't have to ask him that question. I already know the answer. If my bonus was $120 million and I was already very well off and I knew 10 percent of the workforce was going to be laid off, I would not take the bonus.
Do you have a better answer than that? The one you offered is not going to work.
After the debates of 2008 who in their right mind would agree to Tom Brokow being the debate moderator?
The Bay area of California......... yep this was a Brown audience.
Get a grip. What California thinks will be shown on election day. Not by how one particular small audience behaves.
According to the Hugh Hewitt show the whore comment came from Browns wife, so I guess it was okay for him to blow her....
I don’t disagree - this makes it harder to vote for her. But just imagine a Dem dominated legislature, Brown as governor, and prop 25 passing. I still have a small amount of hope for CA but that would end it.
Nobody seemed to hold him to that.
Just talked to friend on phone. He has formed a local Tea Party group and is definately no liberal.
I asked him again. He said he finds the $120 million bonus Whitman took at the time of layoffs troubling. He said he would not himself take the bonus and that he considers it "very troubling."
He does not want Brown but says he likely will not vote for Whitman because of the bonus, her deal with the state employee unions and her open border position.
Any suggestions on what to tell him?
But if you want to try, try this: Ask her (dollars to donuts it's a "her") to look around her own workplace and swear on the Bible that she doesn't see 1 in 10 people who deserve to be laid off. Ask her to swear that she doesn't encounter 1 in 10 sales clerks, customer service reps and other people in her daily life who deserve to be fired. Heck, I barely encounter 1 in 10 who deserve not to be let go.
Every single company that's growing grows too fast and too big, then has to spend some time shrinking and reorganizing to become efficient again. The 90% of the people left behind typically get nice large bonuses when this happens or the year after, because a) they were the ones worth keeping, and b) the company is now more efficient and successful.
The cheers were pretty equal on both sides. Meg got some good applause when she nailed it, and the same for Jerry.
Regarding the whore exchange — it came off very bad. Meg basically was acting all indignant, saying that Californians deserve better than having Brown use such slurs. So Brown asked her about Wilson and she said “that’s different.”
She ended up looking like she was talking out of both sides of her mouth.
Besides, her fake outrage is just not believable. The term “whore” is used plenty with respect to politics and given her 30 years in business, she has heard a lot worse.
IMO, her handlers are overplaying this — women aren’t offended. Many, however, wonder why all the men claim that it is offensive to women, only. The term is gender neutral.
“Whore” is extremely offensive to me, as it is insulting if a woman isn’t one.
It's probably a lie on the basis that everything that comes out of the Brown campaign is a lie. And even if it were true, what difference does it make? Does your friend actually intend to vote for that old dem hack Moonbeam, who allowed public employees to unionize, which is one of the major causes of California's destruction? If so, I doubt he or she ever intended to vote for Whitman.
You have more hope than I do. It is going to take a guy like Tom McClintock in the Governor's office.
She didn’t pay herself anything. The EBay board determines her salary and sets the bonus schedule. She had the responsibility of running EBay for the benefit of its shareholders. Sometimes that requires adjustments in staff dependent on how the business is doing.
Ask the people how many people she hired at EBay. Any layoffs were small compared to how many new hires occurred during her tenure.
He did blow her out of the water on this comment.
Playing the victim came off as phony and staged.
However, she held her own for the rest of the debate and scored a few of her own.
I’d call it a draw.
I asked the Admin Moderator to change the headline. I’m off to go stand in the corner for the rest of the night.
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