Powerful men too often blame women for blunders
BRASH billionaire hotelier Donald Trump seeks the U. S. presidency. Chelsea FC’s manager Jose Mourinho wants to be known as the greatest football manager of all time. But both are in trouble for behaving badly towards women.
Trump slated interviewer Megyn Kelly after the big Republican candidates’ TV debate last week, saying she was a ‘lightweight’ who asked ‘ridiculous’ questions.
Mourinho blamed his team doctor, Eva Carneiro, after Chelsea were held to a draw at home by Swansea, for dashing on the pitch to help one of his players when they were already one man down.
Which is worst — the comb-over king, or the narcissist known to football fans as The Special One? Surely it’s Trump. After the incident, Mourinho explained himself reasonably well, you might think. ‘Even if you are a doctor on the bench, you have to understand the game,’ he said. ‘You have to know that when you have one player less and you go on the pitch to assist a player, you must be sure he has a serious problem.’
Because of Dr Carneiro’s actions, says Mourinho, he was left with only eight fit outfield players to face a Swansea counter-attack.
Be that as it may, it would have been better if he’d discussed the matter privately with Dr Carneiro after the game. Criticising her publicly was gross bad manners.
Trump’s crime was of a different magnitude. If he’d confined himself to disparaging Megyn Kelly as a broadcaster, he might have got away with it. But he didn’t. Quite legitimately, she had pointed out he’d called women he didn’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals’. In front of a TV audience of 24 million, she asked if that sounded like ‘the temperament of a man we should elect as president?’
An embarrassed Trump said after the broadcast that Ms Kelly had ‘ blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever’ as she challenged him.
While his staff conceded that he was referring to menstruation, Trump said he’d meant to say ‘whatever’, not ‘wherever’, for what that’s worth. Later, he said he meant her ‘nose’.
He has since been dropped by a gathering of influential Republicans, RedState. Its spokesman, Erick Erickson, said: ‘I don’t want my daughter in the room with Donald Trump tonight, so he’s not invited. If our standard-bearer has to resort to that, then we need a new standard-bearer.’ Trump’s attack on Ms Kelly was ‘ a bridge too far’, crossing lines that ‘blunt talkers and unprofessional politicians should not cross’.
As for Trump’s hint that, if he didn’t get the Republican presidential nomination, he might run as an independent, a rival candidate, black neuro- surgeon Ben Carson, said that might hand the election to the likely Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, because Trump could split the Right-wing vote.
TRUMP blames ‘political correctness’ for the uproar. Is that credible? What he said sounded off-the-wall offensive to me, and I dislike political correctness. His attack on Megyn Kelly that she was a lightweight might have surprised those familiar with the shrewd, wellprepared 44-year-old newswoman, but Trump has form.
Twenty years ago, he tore into our own Selina Scott after she interviewed him on TV. He wrote to exKing Constantine of Greece — a friend of Ms Scott, who fixed the interview — saying: ‘I know it was not willingly or with knowledge, but you did me no favours by asking me to do an interview with a very sleazy and unattractive Selina Scott.
‘She misrepresented much of the information that I gave her and tried very hard to make me look as foolish as possible. Again, I know that you were well-intentioned, so, in effect, she stabbed you in the back just as she did me.’ Nice guy, isn’t he? It speaks volumes about the condition of America’s Republicans — the party of poor Abraham Lincoln — that, prior to the Megyn Kelly row, Trump was the front-runner for their presidential nomination.
He likes to boast: ‘I get ratings. They call me the Ratings Machine.’
Meanwhile, the Democrats don’t seem any better placed.
When President Obama leaves office, having reached the White House by mobilising small donations, he is likely to be succeeded by Hillary Clinton who, with husband Bill, is reported to have earned $130 million in the past few years.
Our recent election campaign seems relatively decorous by comparison, doesn’t it?