Blowed Up REAL Good
Oh, Gordon Brown. Dude’s rumored to have a bit of a temper. But the pain, the shame of saying what you really think with a live microphone still attached to your shirt:
Here’s what happened. Brown was in Rochdale doing a television interview about the deficit. As he was speaking, a woman called Gillian Duffy, a 65-year-old Labour voter, heckled him about the subject.He engaged her in conversation and they had a rather awkward chat that was filmed live on TV. It was a bit excruciating – mainly because she seemed to be criticising him for everything – but eventually she said local schools were getting better.
Brown tried to joke about her wearing the right colour, red, but that did not seem to go down well. He was still trying to speak to her as she was walking away. That was all I saw. It struck me as a fairly typical “politician meets grumpy voters” moment.
But Brown then got into his car, still wearing the television microphone. Apparently, he was recorded saying that the encounter had been a disaster and that she was a “bigoted woman”. Short of doing a Prescott and punching someone [in re John Prescott, a Labour minister that actually did such a thing once], that’s about as bad as it gets.
Brown is on Radio 2 now. The “bigoted woman” remark has not been mentioned yet. But he sounds extraordinarily tetchy.
One: “Tetchy?” God help us.
Two: I’m sure that some candidate after a campaign stop in — say — Arizona might be wont to say something just like that, out of principle. But to do it a week before the polls? YIKES.
This is running up every flagpole on (what used to be) Fleet Street, which is deeming it at the moment as an earthshaking disaster. The Guardian liveblog (here) has more. So far? A posting of the Channel 4 tape (complete with the hot microphone), a non-apology apology on BBC Radio 2, followed by a call to the woman to actually apologize, and then a DRIVE BACK TO HER PLACE to apologize in person. But also: opposition parties cautiously trying to retain their glee, followed by a suggestion that the woman may be — OH DEAR — the Brit’s version of Joe the Plumber.
A man of the people, eh?
What the fuck is it with finance ministers with no people skills wanting to be maximum leader? It seems that in Canada City and British Land they let their ambitions get the better of them and fuck everything up.
At least he didn’t grab a woman’s ass like a former PM ex Finance Minister once did. Or call an election during a major scandal. Or scream about how electricity deregulation/privatization was going to be a godsend just six months after a major blackout that happened in large part because of deregulation/privatization.
You too remember the Farm Film Report!
It got blowed up!
It got blowed up real good!
This is sad. I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick.
how about this one:
guess which party primary we are talking about here
Gregg Kravitz is a 29-year-old former stockbroker from Philadelphia, who is running for the Pennsylvania statehouse. He claims to be a bisexual.
His opponent in the XXXXX primary, incumbent Babette Josephs, says Kravitz is lying about who he sleeps with in order to curry favor with gay voters. Josephs claims she met a woman at a fundraiser who identified herself as Kravitz’s girlfriend. “I outed him as a straight person,” Josephs announced.
“I do have a girlfriend,” Kravitz conceded in an interview with The Daily Caller, “but I am a bisexual man,
Speaking of the Brits, per Mike Allen, this little gem is in Laura Bush’s new book:
“The royal family is not without its quirks. When Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, came to visit us, they requested glasses of ice before we began a long receiving line. The staff dutifully produced them, and the prince removed a flask from his pocket and added to each a small splash of what I presume was straight gin, so that they might be fortified before the hour of shaking hands.”
(p. 296)
The royal family is not without its quirks
from what I have heard and read this would be, like, the understatement of understatements.
@Capt Howdy: Hey, this anecdote made me like them more. If I had to spend my life standing in receiving lines, going to ribbon cuttings, and doing the royal wave, you better bet I’d have a flask of gin in my pocket.
I still don’t know what to make of the general election, whether Jowls McBrown will get another term because the Lib Dems can’t stand Pretty Boy Floyd of the reformed, “denazified” Conservative Party (let’s just forget about Section 28), or if said Mr. Floyd will squeak by without needing Lib Dem help. I don’t see Nick Clegg becoming PM unless a window to an alternate universe is opened.
@ManchuCandidate: What is Paul Martin up to these days?
@SanFranLefty: Me, too. Reminds me of what we used to do before heading out to visit the “dry” cousins. “There won’t be a goddam thing to drink at the reception, knowing those ‘chapel’ types. Bring the hip flask.”
If I had to stand in line for hours smiling and being nice to the Idiot and the Stepford Wife, I’d have to be slamming ’em back.
@SanFranLefty:
meh
I guess its just my general proletariat nature but I hate them with a passion and have zero sympathy.
I would love to see them stripped of their wealth and given jobs at WalMart.
@SanFranLefty: Liquid courage. I totally get it.
@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Did I see the phrase “keyboard courage” here yesterday?
@Capt Howdy: I have a friend with an art degree whose dad is a Big Time lawyer in Paris – that’s France, y’all – who is a Wal-Mart employee.
@Capt Howdy: I’m with you. I despise them. That’s not quite true: I despise what they represent. The whole pack of them should be shot. Inherited rank trivializes a society. It’s said that when HRH has to attend ceremonial functions which involve long periods of standing with no loo in sight they strap a bottle to her leg that she can pee into.
For the record, Gordon Brown is trending just below Justin Bieber on Twitter.
Hey CB: It seems appropriate that one of the Chicago Stinquers should go on assignment to this strip club’s Sarah Palin lookalike contest in May, and you’re the resident Stinquer who would be least likely to lose his/her lunch get the most out of it. What do you think?
@Benedick:
They’re far better than the Bushes and just about every other member of “American Royalty.”
ADD: And who’d have guessed Harry would grow up to be the PILF? William is getting the family ears and teeth way early, yeesh–those are going in so many directions that they could pick up radio signals.
@Benedick:
heh
it takes a queen to pwn a queen.
@flippin eck: Best comment: “Sarah Palin is ‘hot’ by the very low standards of the Teabaggers. She knows what a gym is for, and she dresses more fashionably than a trailer park hausfrau with a glue-sniffing habit. Therefore, she is a sex symbol to those who only go outdoors to complain about Mexicans. Not a great explanation, but there just isn’t a sensible way to put it. Its like trying to rationalize ICP fandom. ”
Part of the proceeds go to the Tea Baggers, btw.
Nothing on the gun blogs today on “Mr. Virgina Carry While Drankin'” How odd. Maybe I’ll go shake things up a little.
@Mistress Cynica: When I had to go to a few dry weddings or other dry events, I always had to drink MORE before going (versus the pre-going out drinking regularly done) simply because it was the dry friends/family…less to do about pacing the consumption and being away from alcohol than being with them.
@flippin eck: Oh dear FSM.
Waitaminnit, @flippin: You KNOW that I am a committed feminist and think that strip clubs are inherently…
Wait. Bewbies? As research?
Lemme think about it. No promises.
@chicago bureau: Be sure to get a receipt for each dollar stuffed so we can reimburse your expenses.
@SanFranLefty: I vividly remember when one of my cousins married a [shudder] Baptist and held the reception at the church. Our side of the family spent most of the reception in the parking lot swigging bourbon from the monogrammed silver flasks every male member of the family received for high school graduation and mocking the hideous bridesmaid dresses (red velvet with white caribou trim at neck and wrists for a December wedding–they looked like Mrs Claus) and dubious hymn choices (“I’d Rather Have Jesus”). It was also our family’s first exposure to the dreaded Unity Candle, which was also the cause of much hilarity (due to its resemblance to the Paschal candle lit for funerals).
@Mistress Cynica: I went to a Western-themed wedding between two first cousins recently at a prefab Baptist church up in the pines. I like them, they’re friends and I wish them many happy years together. They invited us to help brand cattle last weekend, but I was cleaning irrigation ditches back at the ancestral home.
Hey, I picked up a stack of recent wine magazines from the gym last week (before I fucked up my knee yet again) and McCynicaville was all over the place in one article.
@redmanlaw: Just up the road from the aforementioned Riverbend Landfill.
@nojo: So does “wildlife habitat” mean you can go shoot rats there?
@redmanlaw: The two trash guys bidding for the Yamhill County landfill contract a generation back both had classic Good Ol’ Boy names, but I’d have to rifle some files to remember them. When it was learned that GOB #2 was fronting for Waste Management, the suits rushed in to handle the situation.
And man, they were slicker than the tarp they were going to lay over the trash.
@nojo: And now, after 28 years, I can’t get the word “leachate” out of my head.
@flippin eck: You should recruit Tomcatt for this assignment. He’s always logging in from strip clubs, shitfaced out of his mind, making lewd remarks about cleaning the dance pole with his tongue.
@redmanlaw:
“Western-themed wedding between two first cousins…”
Mormons?
Please describe the outfits in more detail. thx
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