If you confide to a reporter that you think your female primary opponent is a "prissy little miss" who wears "long dresses, looks like Mother Hubbard -- it's sort of like she was a man" . . .
If you say in a news interview that the opponent has "got these long clothes on and an old-fashioned hairdo," and that "it sort of makes you real mad" . . .
If you say all of this while running a radio ad admitting that "I've also said some things I shouldn't" . . .
. . . then you must be Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer. (Or else you're some nut who's randomly paraphrasing Beatles lyrics.)
But if you respond by insisting "I'm not a man" several times "with obvious indignation," as the Post article puts it, you must be Janet S. Owens.
Baltimore Sun political columnist Laura Vozzella notes the oddity of Schaefer's remarks (second item):
No one expected to Schaefer to hold his tongue, but this is news for one of two reasons:And Elizabeth Krum declined to comment.
A) Maryland's most practiced political insulter seems to be losing his touch, calling his Democratic rival both "prissy" and "a man."
Or B) Mother Hubbard has been outed as a cross-dresser.
Schaefer's campaign declined to elaborate.
UPDATE (9/7): "Apologies, they're nice. They're good for the press," Mr. Schaefer said at the tail end of a 45-minute public appearance. "I say what I want to say. I mean most of what I say. And if people don't like it, okay. I'm me. I'm not gonna change."
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"She started it off by calling me . . . like him as a grandfather. I like her as a great, great grandmother," Schaefer said.
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Schaefer insisted yesterday that Owens is the one who started what he called "dirty politics" when she likened him to a grandfather during a May radio interview. He took that as a swipe at his age. "She doesn't like older people," he said. "Look at her. She's not so young herself."
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