Asshole.
Fiorina, whose claim to fame is that she was fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2005, albeit with a $42 million severance package, literally kicked off her campaign with this tacky remark — it happened early on the first day after she’d won the primary.
That night, Fiorina went on Fox’s Greta Van Susteren show and said she would not be apologizing. She also played the cancer card:
FIORINA: Oh, you know, I was — I was quoting a friend of mine. My goodness, my hair’s been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, OK…
FIORINA: Especially when you don’t have any. As you remember, I started out with none.
Fiorina was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2009, underwent chemotherapy over the summer and appeared at campaign events in the fall with very short hair. But because the interview was on Fox News, Van Susteren did not follow up by asking Fiorina to name a few, or even one, of the “million people,” presumably Democrats, who have mocked her chemo-related hair loss. Nor did Van Susteren ask why Carly felt that the mockery she supposedly endured justified being catty about Sen. Boxer.
Fiorina was back on Fox on Sunday, still refusing to back down:
“I regret this whole situation,” Fiorina said on “Fox News Sunday,” but she stopped short of offering an apology. “I gave people the opportunity to talk about something petty and superficial. This is a serious election about serious issues.”
Over the past few months, it appears Fiorina has been keeping her cut very short rather than allowing it to grow into the mid-length bob that used to be her signature style. In May, she referred to her short haircut and brought up her cancer treatment during a televised debate with her primary opponents.
The way she’s handled the aftermath of the gaffe can be summed up in another word that starts with “a”: Amateur.
For starters, she’s hardly the first pol to say something regrettable into a hot mike. If her goal was to put the remark behind her and get her nascent campaign on track, there was just one thing to do — apologize. She didn’t have to call the senator personally — she didn’t even have to mean it.
But she has chosen to take the opposite tack, and by refusing to apologize twice, she’s managing to keep the focus on her tacky and self-demeaning remarks rather than on anything resembling serious issues.
By contrast, the pros at the Boxer campaign responded to Fiorina’s insult by saying, “Let her talk about hair. We’re talking about jobs.”
What is bizarre, however, is the fact that Fiorina’s refusal to apologize signals that her fight with Boxer is somehow personal — a grudge match. Normal political niceties will not be in play. This fight is going straight to the gutter.
Leaving aside the fact that so far as anyone knows Fiorina has never met the senator, and Boxer has never given Fiorina a reason to dislike her on a personal level, Fiorina’s ugly aggressiveness toward Boxer is likely to upend the “Call me Senator” point of attack against Boxer that Republicans have been cultivating for nearly a year.
Last June, GOP operatives pounced on Boxer when, during a hearing, the three-term senator asked a general to call her “senator” instead of “ma’am.” While it may not have been Boxer’s finest moment, as comments go, this one would appear to be a rickety foundation for the Republicans’ case against her — and it’s worth asking whether Republicans would have viewed the same demand from a male senator as grounds for removing him from office.
No matter what happens going forward, it’s unlikely the GOP will get much traction asking Californians to vote against Boxer because she is arrogant when their own candidate has proven herself to be such a catty and vindictive jerk.
You don’t have to like Fiorina (and I don’t) but smear articles don’t work. Any reasonable person can see right through this hollow, hate-filled hit job and recognize it for what it is- a politically motivated fluff piece.
Among your many egregious errors and oversights, I’d like to pick on the line “Fiorina, whose claim to fame is that she was fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2005…”
She was the first woman ever to serve as CEO of a Fortune 20 company (that is, one of the 20 biggest companies in the world) and she held that position for 6 years. Saying her claim to fame was getting fired is a bit like saying Wayne Gretzky is best known as the man who scored 9 goals in 70 games in 1999. It totally misses the point and reeks of bias.
Cam –
You’re right that my tone was harsh, but I believe it was warranted given Fiorina’s record and her comportment during the primary and, especially, last week. I also stand by the assertions of fact I made and my opinion of her political and business acumen, or lack thereof. If all that taken together is a “hit piece” in your opinion, so be it. I think I’m in pretty good company.
For example, in April, David Packard, son of the HP founder and a member of the board during Fiorina’s tenure and a rock-ribbed Republican, wrote:
She did not trust her employees, nor could they trust her. She was fired for, among other things, wiretapping members of the HP board of directors.
According to her Wikipedia page, “When Fiorina became CEO in July, 1999, HP’s stock price was $52 per share, and when she left 5 1/2 years later in February 2005, it was $21 per share — a loss of over 60 percent of the stock’s value.”
Via Political Correction: According to the International Herald Tribune, “Fiorina’s personality and management style ultimately led to her demise. She used hardball tactics to suppress the opposition of Walter Hewlett, the company’s largest shareholder and the son of its co-founder William Hewlett, to the 2002 Compaq merger…Last year, when the company’s struggling corporate computer division failed to meet its sales growth targets, she abruptly fired three top executives in what many people, both inside and outside the company, saw as a public hanging.” [International Herald Tribune, 2/12/05]
While at HP, Fiorina shipped tens of thousands of jobs from California to China and India. On Wednesday, not long after she dissed Boxer’s hair, she said she would ship 10,000 more California HP jobs overseas, if she were still CEO.
Given all this, it’s not surprising that Fiorina was named one of “The 20 Worst CEOs of All Time” by Conde-Nast Portfolio in April 2009.
I loved Andy Borowitz’s tweet yesterday: “BREAKING: Barbara Boxer Says Fiorina’s Comments About Her Hair Distract Attention from Fiorina’s Huge Ass”
That is an impressive feat. CEO of a top 20 company who lost significant market share during her tenure and is back on top only after she was forced out. Dell & IBM would have loved her to stay CEO of HP so their market share growth could have continued.
Cam,
The only reason I can see to criticize this post is if the information it contains is incorrect. It’s not. Every point Jon makes in this article is 100% correct and can be verified.
I worked for HP during the Carly years. At first everyone was entranced by her stirring speeches, but after a few years of no results, everyone lost faith. She’s no good at getting actual work done. And she’s definitely into self-promotion… Her “coffee talk” speeches became huge events where HP would rent out large venues and BUS IN employees from nearby sites and hand out noisemakers. All talk and no walk.
On the day her firing was announced, HP’s market cap shot up SIX BILLION DOLLARS and there was no replacement for her waiting in the wings. On that day I got more than ten emails from coworkers with MP3s or references to “ding dong the witch is dead.”
Any way you look at it, Carly was a miserable failure at HP.
The only asshole here is the political hack writer.
Wow! A Carly supporter. I didn’t know there were any. So, Jason, what is it you like about Fiorina? Is it her record as HP CEO when she laid off thousands of Californians and shipped their jobs to India and communist China at the same time she bought a shiny new corporate jet, the eavesdropping on the HP board that got her fired, the $42 million fuck-off package HP gave her for driving the company in the ditch or her multiple gaffes as McCain-Palin surrogate that helped them lose the election?
I mean, other than that, what is her record? She worked as a temp once — and, hey, nothing wrong with that, but I’m not sure it adds to her qualifications.
But over to you. Why should Californians vote for Carly Fiorina?
Cue the crickets…