Before the California Democratic Party announced that Bill Clinton will come to California next month to campaign for Jerry Brown (and Gavin Newsom) and before Brown apologized to Clinton for making a joke about his denial that he’d had sex with Monica Lewinsky, Calbuzz suggested Jerry might have to slip into a blue dress and seek forgiveness from Bubba.
Which got our Chief Editorial Poison Penman Tom Meyer thinking about the delicious possibilities that scenario presented. And before you could say “impeachment,” or explain what the meaning of the word “is” is, Meyer whipped up a vision of how that scene might have gone down — with Meg Whitman laughing her ass off on the sidelines.
And remember, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. So don’t be making any salacious suggestions from Meyer’s drawing. Note: we have no evidence that Jerry has ever pranced around in drag. But we’re always looking for tips.
Who’s afraid of 5th & Mission? The Chronicle’s John Diaz is probably the most thoughtful, most fair and most civil editorial page editor in the state, so Meg Whitman’s refusal to accept his respectful invitation to meet with the paper’s editorial board seems particularly craven, even for a campaign that has been marked from the start by cowardly unwillingness to meet face-to-face with most journalists or, for that matter, with just about anyone outside her cordoned off cocoon of corporate marketing and paid TV ads.
What is Whitman so afraid of? Why is she apparently so terrified of traveling outside her safety zone of staged media events, preselected audiences and ranks of courtiers paid big bucks to kiss her ring? Is she so entitled, superior and important that she shudders at the thought of lowering herself to answer basic policy questions from ink-stained journalists from a storied and historic California institution to whom hundreds of thousands of citizens turn every day – 12 million a month online – for information about those who seek the power to spend their tax dollars?
Perhaps a hint of the answer came in Whitman’s pathetic performance the other day at Yelp where employees cleaned her clock just by asking a couple of tough questions.
Calbuzz was the first news organization in California to call sustained attention to Whitman’s obsessive avoidance of engagement in the public rituals of seeking California’s highest office, which voters have a right to expect of anyone who presumes to lead a sprawling, noisy state of 37 million people of extraordinary diversity, cacophonous voices and conflicting interests.
Since we first wrote about the issue back in the spring of 2009, the mystery has only deepened: What does eMeg have to hide?
The most undercovered issue in politics: Timothy Noah continues to impress with “The Great Divergence,” his ongoing series about income and wealth equality in America. For a short course on the subject, check out these 15 quicky charts, courtesy of Business Insider, which pretty much tell the story.
And for a good time: Catch Jerry’s appearance on the always insightful and informative Good Day LA .
