Dear Meg Whitman
The Kanye Shrug doesn't work all the time, Meg. We know what you did...
via ABCNews:
California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman today found herself battling allegations that she knowingly employed an undocumented immigrant housekeeper, failed to pay a portion of her wages and then fired her in an act of political damage control. The charges come a little over a month before the November election.
At a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday organized by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, Whitman's former housekeeper and nanny, Nicky Diaz, tearfully recounted how in June 2009 she was suddenly terminated by Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh, after she said she asked the couple for legal help to obtain U.S. citizenship. Allred also alleged that Whitman became aware of Diaz's undocumented status years earlier, but took no action. Whitman said the "charges are without merit."
Diaz told reporters that just a few months before Whitman announced she was running for governor as a Republican, the former eBay CEO fired her after nine years spent cleaning the couple's 3,700-square-foot home in an upscale Northern California suburb and shuttling their children to and from school and appointments.
"From now on you don't know me and I don't know you," Diaz said Whitman told her in the summer of 2009. "I was shocked and hurt that Ms. Whitman would treat me this way after nine years. I realized at that moment that she didn't appreciate my work. I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage."
At the current juncture of politics in the United States, the word politician and hypocrite are damn near synonymous. Especially with the emergence of the Tea Party and the so-called 'bipartisan' nature that the government is trying to engender, it's obvious that not everyone can be on the right side at all times. When it comes to election time, there ends up being a mad rush to clean up whatever muck can be raked up against a particular politician, most of it going on behind closed door meetings at the expense of lobbyists and donated dollars. That said, what happens when the political damage control just so happens to coincide with an issue at the forefront of that particular candidate's jurisdiction? Such is your case, Meg Whitman. As you prepare for election day in California, it's obvious your stake in the illegal immigration issue was much deeper than you wanted it to be.
Meg, I won't mince words: Illegal immigrants are everywhere. You know it. I know it. The American people know it. Yet, the major contention against allowing these people amnesty and asylum is that their place in American is more deeply rooted than most would like to admit. Meg, you knowingly hired an illegal immigrant in Nicky Diaz and had her in your employ for well over 9 years. By most employment standards, that's grounds for the job security AND respect that such a tenure warrants. Think about it Meg. If you had been working at a law office for 9 years and they tried to cut YOU off and disavow all knowledge of your existence for superficial political purposes, how would you feel? My guess is you'd probably file suit, go to the media and make a huge deal about it, much like your former housekeeper is doing now.
See the thing is, Meg, as a Republican candidate, you're walking a thin line here. Do you continue the status quo of using your power to manipulate other lives as you see fit, or do you stand by your party's platform of 'kicking all of the
SIDENOTE: Since TMZ is the one who reported Ms. Diaz's gripes, albeit in a professional manner, can we finally admit that, while cutthroat in their research, blogs are a legitimate source of breaking news?Look, Meg, it sucks that you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar that your party's been trying to put on the high shelf for years now. Don't try to deny it, now that your candidacy is at stake, and certainly don't do it as a last ditch effort to cover your party's ass. That, in and of itself, would be just as hypocritical...