Meg Whitman showed her face in public for the first time since news broke that EBay paid a $200K settlement to an employee who Whitman shoved (or, in the words of the AP, “physically ‘guided’ her from a conference room”). Here’s Meg:
“Listen, I bring tremendous strengths to this office. I have worked in business. I have met a payroll,” she said. “I know how to get things done, and I am held accountable for results.”
Perhaps I’m unschooled in the fine details of corporate accountability, but I’d wager that a low-level EBay manager who shoved a subordinate might not experience exactly the same kind of “accountability” as Meg did.
Also, too: Who gets that pissed about an interview in Second Life (via)? If something that trifling is enough to turn Whitman into a strong-arm shoving machine, how can anyone expect her to keep her cool as Governor?
Mr Furious
“IOKIYAR.”
Next question…
Bob
Sorry, but this is silly. Does MW have a history of loosing it? Has she paid-off a lot of folks at E Bay in order to keep them quite? I hope she is not elected but there must be more substantial arguments to be made against her. Jeez.
jibeaux
I know it’s these last few days before payday talking, but damn I wish someone would shove me for $200,000. I’d even pay the attorney’s fee on it. How can I thrust myself into the path of a stupid Republican with very deep pockets and anger management issues?
4tehlulz
@jibeaux: Move to Arizona; you’re bound to cross paths with a McCain eventually.
mistermix
@Bob: It’s relevant because she’s running on the special awesomeness that only a corporate CEO has.
And I have no idea if she has a track record of losing it, because these settlements all have confidentiality clauses, and this one happened to be leaked to the Times.
jibeaux
@4tehlulz:
Ha!
Of course, it’s already 82 degrees here when I first wake up in the morning, and trying to get in the car at lunchtime makes me think that I should have just brought some raw meat and left it on the seat and it would have a great medium-rare sear to it by now. Thinking about being in Arizona now makes me want to find a cave.
jibeaux
I don’t think those are in real short supply either.
fucen tarmal
if you get shoved by a superior, particularly if the foul is kinda ticky-tack, it really comes down to a popularity contest, whether or not the foul gets called.
if this one was called, i wonder if there is something to it, not the anger management, being hit by a woman brings about too many mixed emotions of being a victim not allowed to defend oneself and liking it, for the gop base to care, but that she was unpopular enough at ebay that this ever got as far as it did.
4tehlulz
@fucen tarmal: Meg probably argued the call too much, leading to the fine.
She is the Rasheed Wallace of the Republican Party.
Comrade Javamanphil
New career for the Italian soccer team: Consultants to mid-level managers on how to take a dive when shoved by superiors. They could do it for a 10% cut.
Bob L
@fucen tarmal: I was thinking that must have been a pretty serious shove and blatant attack with a history behind it for someone to go threw lawsuite. Sure it sounds like 200K right now, but the plantiff risked a lot, if they lost they would be SOL with dim job prospects.
Johio
Something I seriously do not understand – why on earth is anyone willing to spend upwards of 100 million to be governor of a state that seems to be ungovernable? Seriously, they have horrific financial problems and a political system that pretty much makes it impossible to take any unpopular stands. They get earthquakes and fires on a regular basis and every time you turn around, some nimnul is getting a ridiculous measure placed on the ballot that will further erode any chance of sensible governance.
Why why why would anyone want that job, let alone pay to get it?
beltane
@Johio: Whitman has so much money that she’s willing to invest $100 million of it to ensure her taxes don’t go up.
fucen tarmal
@Bob L:
even at that, self-preservation might dictate the possible witnesses were updating their amazon wishlists on their crackberries at the time, and didn’t see anything…i mean it is the ceo, you don’t go out of your way unless she had already lost a lot of respect.
JGabriel
It’s not as bad as being a Republican.
.
arguingwithsignposts
@Johio:
This. I am constantly amazed at people who spend countless millions of their own money to get a job that pays in the low six figures. WTF is wrong with these people?
me
Of course the real question is, who still uses Second Life?
Zifnab
She’s a teabagger. Maybe her supporters DON’T expect her to keep cool. I can see them cheering as she marches down to the state capital and starts stiff-arming state legislatures and bullying dissenting staffers.
Zifnab
@me: Furries.
SATSQ
Zifnab
@beltane: This.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if she has Presidential ambitions. Big states like California and Texas are great jump-off points when you’re eying the White House.
arguingwithsignposts
@Zifnab:
Except Gulivornia has become ungovernable. It might have been a jumping off point in the ’60s (a la Reagan), but what has become basically a bankrupt state? Not so much.
pharniel
@arguingwithsignposts:
NO, it’s exactly what a teatard wants to see.
It’ll show conviction: “well, I could have raised taxes and saved a bunch of liberal bleeding heart programs, but I bit the bullet and cut spending like we need to do at the federal level!”
It’ll basically allow you to demonstrate your credibility, and as we all know if it all goes into a hellhole well, that’s just the hollywood types agitating to make it bad.
because conservatism can never fail.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I hope Jerry Brown’s campaign makes an ad, taking that $100 million figure Whitman has spent already, and translates it into what it would have bought for the state if she had merely “donated it to the state’s coffers’.
Lolis
I was born and lived in California until I was 24, but if that state elects any Republicans at the state level right now I will wash my hands of it. I’m not sure how either Whitman or Fiorina are competitive in any polls after the huge mess Republicans have currently caused in the state.
russell
I know it flies in the face of conventional wisdom to make this point, but being a good for-profit corporate executive is not necessarily a good predictor of success as a public sector executive.
Different goals call for different skill sets.
Johio
@beltane: That doesn’t make any sense either – no way her California state taxes could increase by 100 million.
Svensker
There, Meg, I fixed it for ya.
Jon H
“Who gets that pissed about an interview in Second Life (via)?”
Whitman probably found out that the interview was likely to be invaded by hundreds of flying penis griefers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@phoebes-in-santa fe: Nice one. I just wonder that more people in CA don’t remember that they already tried electing a governor who was gonna fix everything by doin’ stuff. Find out what that “stuff” is first.
Erik Vanderhoff
“I have met a payroll…”
Has she met a payroll that requires she get 80 out of 120 people to approve it? Jeez. Meg Whitman is even more ignorant of basic governance than der Governator was.
Erik Vanderhoff
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think Jerry Brown was spot-on when he said that she wants to be the first woman President.
catclub
@Bob L:
I am pretty sure they still have dim job prospects, whether winning or losing the suit.
Bob L
arguingwithsignposts: Probably thinks she will just scream at the State Assembly and they will do what she orders them to, since unlike the Governator she isn’t a liberal fag, the Assembly will cut all that liberal crap out, get to work, the resulting tax cuts will solve California’s budget problems, that miracle means win in 2014 and she is the greatest president in US history.
In other words she is high off the smoke from all that money she burns.
ThresherK
href=”#comment-1851838″>Svensker:
I’m on the East Coast, so perhaps I didn’t get the campaign slogan properly:
Elect Meg “But I’m the California Bidnesswoman Who Didn’t Run My Company Into the Ground” Whitman.
Hey, when the things that a CEO can do (like abandoning poor and unprofitable clients, playing one tax district off another, lobbying for incentives, threaten to relocate, buy, sell or close down other companies, or play accounting games which blow up in a corporation’s face 5 years later) transfer into really doing some damn governing, I’ll be all ears.
Because we’re just getting over the fetishization of Master CEO, privatizing, and the patented running-it-to-ruin-it Republicanization of public sector. What does Meg Whitan offer that’s any different?
trollhattan
The Megs has thus far fashioned herself as a somewhat polished Sarah, i.e., can complete sentences containing subject-verb agreement, but they’re nevertheless often lies.
She’s as resolutely press-phobic as Palin and compensates by buying vast swaths of media to give the appearance of being available while virtually keeping herself in a Mason jar. Clearly, it’s worked up ’til now.
Our old buddy, “moderate” Republican Pete Wilson seems to be the driving force behind her, and I’ll guess it’s he and some Republican operatives who fluffed her into
runningopening her vault wide. As best I can tell, Meg’s first order task is to get into the statehouse and continue to lock down/paralyze government in order to retain Prop 13 as is, as well as protect the 2/3 legislative vote to pass a new tax. Second-order goals will be privitize state government and sell off assets, drill-baby-drill, dismantle Cal/EPA, smack around teh gheys, build new tollroads and send several million Latinos…somewhere else.i.e., She’d be vastly worse than the governator.
I don’t know that I can take five months of this:
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/06/whitman-launches-tv-ad-hitting.html
Meg
@Johio:
I’m from CA. Some people think it is just to pave the way for a presidential run in the future.
When you have more money than you can spend, you want more power and glory.
Brachiator
This kind of thing rarely gets any traction. A shove is not exactly the same thing as a punch (even for those who note that technically almost any physical contact can be described as an assault). And the employee is still working there as an executive, which further undercuts any attempt to make political hay out of the incident.
How can anyone expect Whitman to keep her cool? Good question. Can’t say. Not much here to suggest that she has a history of “losing her cool.”
During the California recall wars, independent investigative reporter Jill Stewart filed a few stories that suggested that governor Gray Davis had a history of shoving his staff, throwing phones and ashtrays at them, shouting at them and otherwise hurling abuse, and that this went as far back as his days as chief-of-staff to Jerry Brown. Other reporters declined to look further into this, and voters concentrated more on other issues rather than get swayed by tawdry accusations.
I don’t think that Whitman will win, no matter how much of her own money she throws on her campaign. The shoving thing is not entirely trivial, but nearly so when compared with things more related to her ability to be an effective governor.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Here’s the hundred-million dollar rub: So long as she keeps herself sheltered behind a cadre of handlers trying to fashion a public persona directly from bundles of cash, whatever comes to light from her past takes on a magnified and real meaning. If Megs doesn’t want to be considered a brittle, tempestuous martinet she needs to step forward and conduct her campaign as a flesh and blood candidate.
Because she steadfastly refuses to do so I’ll take the ebay story as indicating a legitimate criticism. In my entire working life I’ve seen one physical confrontataion, and that was between teenagers in a warehouse. She gets no pass from me.
Whether the California electorate has the same viewpoint I can’t begin to guess.
Kyle
CEOs are by and large bullying, arrogant, clueless assholes with huge egos, who get where they are by being exceptionally aggressive and/or lucky and well-connected, not skillful or intelligent. There are exceptions, but I seriously doubt Meg Whitman is one of them.
Catsy
@trollhattan: This. In all my years of work, the only time I’ve ever seen a physical altercation between two employees was decades ago when I was working fast food jobs–and even there everyone involved was canned on the spot.
Maybe there are industries and cultures where getting physical is more accepted, but I’ve been working in IT for more than 15 years and not once have I ever seen anyone get into a shoving match. I have seen arguments, insults, garden-variety kvetching, shit-talking of devs by test or ops and vice-versa, open contempt for the incompentent fucks in that team over there, and top-volume shouting matches over process or policy between people operating far above my pay grade.
I don’t care if it was our team lead, his lead, a VP or the CEO–if someone invaded my personal space and shoved me or tried to bodily escort me anywhere, I would have their ass in front of HR and my attorney faster than they could say “career-limiting move”.
Not okay, and the cavalier business-as-usual way that Whitman treats it should disqualify her from ever again holding any position with more authority than that required to upsell a Happy Meal.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Take it as you want. As far as I can tell, California voters don’t give a rat’s ass about stuff like this. I am not saying that they should or shouldn’t, but just noting that the story is just not anything that anybody cares about here in California.
Also, people keep making a big deal about Whitman’s bundles of cash and how she is trying to craft a persona. But California has had past examples of wealthy people who also had past political clout (e.g., former LA mayor Richard Riordan). But Whitman neither voted nor participated in the political world before she decided she wanted to become governor. She got through the Republican primary by being the loudest with the GOP safe words (taxes, immigration).
So far, this is not playing that well with the larger electorate.
Ruckus
@Catsy:
I used to work in professional sports where fighting was specifically not allowed. But because of the nature of outright competition, fights did occur. Not often but tempers did flair on occasion. They were all met with fines, disqualifications, suspensions, and if it got too far, it could be the end of a career.
I think you are correct that this is a big deal because it shows that a person who can not discuss, negotiate, compromise, IOW work with others is not a leader, they are bullies. They have to have their own way all the time and will go to any lengths to get that. A CEO may be able to get away with that kind of behavior (not that it’s OK) but not a political leader. And in Meg’s case she also has the added bonus of being a crappy CEO.
Darkrose
@Brachiator:
Honestly, I’m not so sure. This plays into a narrative that’s coming together quite well: Whitman as CEO like her buddies at Goldman Sachs, who has nothing but contempt for anyone who doesn’t move in her circles. It’s okay to be an actor and do that, because we love us some Hollywood celebs in this state, but I don’t think it works as well when it’s someone who doesn’t quite make people go, “Ooooh…I talked to ***Meg Whitman***!”
Sadly, there’s also a gender element at work. Arnie calls the legislators “girly men” and he’s being tough. Meg shoves an employee and she’s a hysterical bitch.
Lysana
@Darkrose:
No, actually, those of us who dislike Meg Whitman in part because her anger management is clearly lacking found Arnie’s “girly men” remark offensive and homophobic.
Brachiator
@Darkrose:
People outside California are magnifying this shove (which was mediated and where the employee is still working for the company) into some egregious act, but it just is not playing that way for the voters, as far as I can see. And as I noted, this is not a defense of Whitman. When a reporter tried to raise past issues of the sitting governor, Gray Davis, physically and verbally abusing his staffers, absolutely nobody cared. Nobody. It simply did not enter into the decisions voters made when they voted on the recall.
But you do touch on something here that may be magnified in California, but also exists on the East Coast and elsewhere to some degree. California has the movie industry, record companies, sports empires and other high-prestige companies where people want to be part of the glamor and power, even at the cost of their dignity. There are very common stories of movie executives, record moguls, and of course high strung artists putting their employees through hell, and of people putting up with it because one day they hope to be the high and mighty slinger of crap and not the recipient.
The nervous Nellies and the pearl-clutchers may swoon at this revelation, but really need to grow up. There are sitting politicians who have nothing but contempt for the people who elected them, and who enjoy petty prerogatives, such as refusing to ride in elevators with “little people,” refusing to let other staffers dress in their own preferred power colors, etc.
What? Who called Meg a hysterical bitch? I’ve never seen this, except maybe in places where people insist on making mountains out of molehills.
The Arnie “girly men” quip is BS, too. Everybody with half a brain knows that he was referring to an SNL skit which poked fun at Arnold himself. I just laughed when I read the nonsense coming from pundits who evidently are not allowed to stay up past 11 pm, and who tried to twist this into some horrible homophobic attack on legislators. And since the boneheads in Sacramento have never done much to merit any respect, I don’t know of anyone who even seriously bothered to come to their defense on this. The whole faux outrage purely existed only for pundits and partisans.
Also, unless Arnie was actually beating up the legislators, there ain’t even much of a comparison here, let alone any issues of sexism. But let’s try. Meg shoves a woman, physically puts her hands on her, so she is a Mean Girl. Arnie makes a joke about state legislators, so criticism of Meg is sexist, and Arnie is a He Man. Nope. Doesn’t work.
mclaren
@Johio:
Because governor of California is the stepping stone to the presidency. Even the most grossly incompetent fool can become president by using the job of governor of California as a resume item…look at the senile sociopath Ronald “The Cruel Man With the Constant Smile” Reagan.
Meg Whitman has her eye on the presidency. Governor of California is the job qualification she’ll use. And as for the claim that California is ungovernable–yes, but so is America, so what’s the difference? All Meg has to do is claim that “our politics has become so degraded it’s impossible to govern today,” like the current denizen of the White House, and presto! Hordes of M-bots will rush forward to support Meg Whitman’s brave new “post-partisan” politics…
mclaren
@ThresherK:
Ah, but that’s exactly what congress and our current presidents do.
“Abandoning poor and unprofitable clients…” — dumping poor people off the welfare rolls by savagely cutting social security and medicare.
“Playing one tax district off another…” — Offshoring all America’s jobs to the lowest-tax lowest-regulation third world country by playing one third world hellhole off against another.
“Lobbying for incentives…” — America demands and gets special lower prices for oil than Europe or Japan by throwing its military weight around the world. America demands and gets special treatment for the dollar as a global reserve currency. America demands and gets special treatment in the UN General Assembly. America demands and gets special treatment from the world community when it announces insane unacceptable unilteral initiatives like the ability to assassinate any citizen of any country on earth, or the ability to tax their own citizens who work abroad (which no other country does). The list goes on…
“Threaten to relocate…” — America threatens to move its industries out of dirt poor third world countries that don’t support our outrageous scams like ACTA.
“Buy, sell or close down other companies…” — America invades other third countries with rich resources, then buys or sells or closes down their governments. It’s a classic Carl Icahn-style buy up the company then strip it for its assets scam, except America does it with entire third world countries. Namoi Wolf’s “Disaster capitalism,” anyone…?
“Play accounting games which blow up in a corporation’s face 5 years later…” — Haven’t you been paying attention to all the accounting scams going on in Washington? We only spend 650 billion dollars a year on the U.S. military–except that our real military expenditures are 1.3 trillion dollars a year because that bogus accounting doesn’t include military retirement (75 billion/yr), Pentagon black projects (50 billion/yr), the VA (75 billion/yr), the CIA (55 billion/yr), Blackwater (now revealed as a CIA front operation, 60 billion/yr), and on and on and on. Or how about the bogus accounting games played with the interest on America’s national debt? Or how about the phony accounting games played by the deficit commission to create the impression that there’s some big problem with Social Security when there really isn’t, the better to justify slashing social security and medicare so we can get more tax cuts for the rich? What about all the scams and lies and smoke and mirrors surround the Bush tax cuts, THE classic example of accounting games designed to cover up a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich? You get the idea.
sean
This site is awesome! I love grouchman.com but this site is a close second. its all about venting!
David
These CEO’s let their power get to their head…oh well. Thats how it works. In reply to Post # 48 – agreed. I checked out grouchman.com cool site. Its always nice to vent. thats why i come here too!