On a more serious note, Jerry had an interesting influence on American politics (at least in my opinion) and it’s not all bad. When he was Governor, the Democratic party was almost exclusively focused, in terms of Law and Order and criminal affairs, on the rights of the accused. The words “victim’s rights” hadn’t been uttered yet, defense lawyers defending rapists were allowed to quiz victims about the length of their skirts, and California couldn’t pass a use-a-gun-go-to-prison law that didn’t get overturned by the state Supreme Court. Liberals had no time for straights who lost some of their vast wealth; most thought that many criminals in prison were reincarnations of Jean Valjean.

At the end of his governorship, Brown ran for Senator and lost. Just prior to, or after, his defeat, he made a speech to the state Democratic Convention, and lambasted the party for its attitude towards crime and criminals. He said that the party was “kidding itself” if it thought they could continue with this attitude indefinitely. Somewhere around the same time we had the Mosconi/Milk/Dan White fiasco, and between those two events, the liberal community became considerably less sympathetic to criminals and crime than they were before.

As an aside, Brown’s abortive campaign for Senator was marked by a couple of amusing incidents. At one point he was so short of money that Johnny Carson told his audience that if they gave money to the Hare Krishna at the airport, it might be Jerry. Around the same time, his opponent in the Democratic primary was (of all people) Gore Vidal, who dubbed Jerry “Lord of the Flies”. Unfortunately for Gore, the state isn’t that literary or literate, so he didn’t do very well against Jerry, who lost to … I don’t remember…

Regardless, one of the hallmarks of Jerry’s political career so far is what others mentioned in the comments above: quirky liberalism. He often espoused things that didn’t work, or that weren’t popular, because he thought them right. He’s not that effective a politician, and he’s famously willing to buck convention when it suits him. In a strange way, his being Pat Brown’s son seems to have liberated him: he doesn’t have to kowtow to various interests in the Democratic Party, and so he doesn’t. On the other hand, he can definitely be a goofball, and make serious boneheaded errors while in his goofy stage.

So my view on the scandals? I seriously doubt he knew the idiot was taping conversations; my guess is he was livid when it was revealed. As for this other taped speech where the guy opines that Brown will “do the right thing” and torpedo the investigation…I’d be surprised if he tried that, and I’m certain if he did he wouldn’t get anywhere. We have at least 3 journalists locally who specialize in the hidden camera “gotcha” school of journalism on our local news broadcasts, never mind 60 Minutes. Anyone can see the hypocrisy of prosecuting a conservative for doing it, but allowing everyone else.

True — Linda’s roughly the size of the State of California now.

*reproductions of works of art, mostly paintings, using living models

But I digress.

My fondest memory of Jerry was his deep & heavy pot smoking daze.

He’s the guy who won’t go quietly into the night. If this is the best Californians can do as would be gov., God help us all.

The fixing of elections is a very long lever indeed. ACORN is it’s fulcrum. It appears to be a political machine, a la Chicago or Tammany Hall, but national in it’s scope. If Brown is mixed up in it, then we have a problem.