Bigotgate?

Poor Gordon Brown, PM of Great Britain, in the pre-election campaign to keep his job. He got caught saying regrettable things on a live mike. He called a the woman to whom he had been chatting a bigot, because she was complaining about the numbers of Eastern European immigrants in the UK taking jobs and using services. They are calling it Bigotgate and saying that it threatens to sink his campaign.

Not that what he said was so awful, but it was said behind her back and not face to face. The political opposition pounced and the news organizations have been delighting in the gaffe, despite the fact that he actually went back to the woman's house and personally apologized.

Poor Brown, all he did was call the woman a bigot. He never mentioned mention the fact that she was also overweight.

Kinda reminds you of the good old USA. Just a few weeks ago, VP Joe Biden famously congratulated Obama on his Health Care bill passage, in front of a live mike. Everyone who doesn’t live in a cave has heard him say grinningly “This is a big fucking deal !” That got everyone's panties in a bunch for a few days, especially the opposition that is obsessed with nitpicking everything that anyone in the Obama administration says or does.

These contemporary examples are not the first incidents where embarrassing things were caught on mike

From Wikipedia:

"On September 4, 2000, when Bush and running mate Dick Cheney appeared at a
campaign event at Naperville, Illinois. While on stage before the event, Bush
said to Cheney, "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York
Times." Cheney responded, "Oh yeah, he is, big time." The remarks were picked up
by a live microphone, causing a minor campaign controversy. Bush later publicly
stated "I regret that a private comment I made to the vice presidential
candidate made it through the public airways. I regret everybody heard what I
said."

When this Ronald Reagan sound bite was leaked in 1984, I got under my desk

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've
signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five
minutes."

It was a warm-up joke, and only the audio techs heard it live, before the radio speech was broadcast; but within a few hours it leaked out and most of Asia went on alert. Old Dutch really had a decent sense of dark humor.


I really can't say whether Brown is worthy of being re-elected to the PM post, but if I was a Brit, I would look at his record and pay less attention to an utterance that was accidentally recorded.
And that fat bigot, well, maybe she needs a course in diversity training...