Hey Carly Feel-Her-Weenie: Don't Call Me Ma'am Either

Carly Fiorini, whose primary accomplishment in her entire life is that she almost drove Hewlett Packard into the dirt, has now decided that she wants to be a Senator. So she's going to try to get the Republican nomination to run against Senator Barbara Boxer in California. She won't get my vote.

As part of her fund-raising program, she is inundating right-wingers with a video clip of a hearing before the Senate during which Senator Barbara Boxer was questioning General Walsh. In one of his responses, General Walsh called Senator Barbara Boxer "ma'am." Senator Barbara Boxer interrupted the General, and asked him to please call her "Senator," because she worked so hard for the title. He then said Yes, Senator.

I don't know if the General was trying to be offensive or insulting to Senator Boxer. I suspect he knew exactly what he was doing. People in the military are like European Royalty, highly conscious of titles and envious of those with higher titles. Does anyone doubt that if Senator Boxer had called Walsh "Mr. Walsh" he wouldn't have done the same thing -- asked her to call him by his title, General Walsh?

If this is Carly Fiorini's best shot (and I suspect it is), she's lost already. No need to wait for the election. Carly Fiorini at one time was the CEO of Hewlett Packard ("HP'). When she became CEO in 1999, the HP stock was valued at $52/share. By 2005, when Fiorini was fired (actually the Board of Directors forced her to resign) the HP stock was valued at only $21/share, for a 60% loss in stock value during her reign. Tough luck for the shareholders. Luckily for Fiorini, she had one of those corporate insider golden parachutes, so despite her resounding failure, she ended up being paid $20 million to leave the company. Since getting fired in such a spectacular manner, Fiorini has done such useless and despicable things as work for the Fox Business Network, work for George W. Bush, and work on the John McCain election campaign (where she notably and quite publicly said that Sarah Palin was not qualified to even run a business like HP).

Now Fiorini has apparently decided that since she's been such a failure at other things, maybe she should become a politician herself. And she plans to do that by attacking and demeaning Senator Barbara Boxer in the most personal and sexist way possible.

I'm very tired of seeing men treat women in a demeaning way just to try to one-up them in some exchange. I think lots of women feel the same way. Carly Fiorini is adopting a tactic that we might expect from the most right-wing males in the country. Since she's trying so hard to act like some pathetic insecure male, I think from now on I'm going to call her Carly Feel-Her-Weenie.