Brown Scolds Sen. Kerrey for Telling Off-Color Joke

In a local television interview scheduled for broadcast Sunday, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. sharply criticizes Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey for an off-color joke Kerrey told at Brown’s expense. Brown also accuses Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton of being “bought and paid for” by special interests.

All three men are rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Appearing on the KCBS-Channel 2 “Newsmakers” program, Brown said the joke told privately by Kerrey at a political roast for Rep. Dick Swett (D-N.H.) on Nov. 15 “shows an insensitivity that may be appropriate in the locker room--although I even wonder about that--but it certainly is inappropriate for a President who is supposed to bring people together and to lead.”

Kerrey earlier this week apologized profusely for the joke, which was inadvertently picked up by microphones for C-SPAN, the cable public affairs network. The story revolved around a man in a bar--Brown, in Kerrey’s telling--attempting to pick up two women who are lesbians.

In the KCBS interview, Brown said, “Mentioning me (in the joke) is irrelevant. The point is it denigrated people based on their sexual orientation, in this case lesbian women.”

Asked if the incident would be a serious blow to Kerrey’s campaign, Brown replied: “The political experts would have to tell you; but to stand around and use language that I’m sure you would be shocked if I used on the show, when you’re standing right on a platform with kids in the front row and 500 people (around), you might say, with the country going down the drain, where is the man’s mind?”

Brown added that he thought the episode would affect the way voters perceived Kerrey “because he is presenting himself as a very evolved, advanced human being and those kinds of jokes reflect a consciousness and a mentality that a lot of people thought we were putting behind us.”

Responding to Brown’s remarks, Steve Jarding, a spokesman for Kerrey, said Friday that “Bob has apologized. I don’t know what else he could say. . . . I think he would agree with what Gov. Brown said about it being insensitive.”

With his salvos, Brown further sharpened an approach that has established him as the scold of the Democratic field. During the New Hampshire roast itself, he chided his colleagues for joking while the country faced serious problems. And at last week’s joint candidate appearance before the AFL-CIO, he repeatedly suggested that his competitors were beholden to special interests.

Brown, in the KCBS interview, targeted that accusation specifically at Clinton, who proposed a middle-class tax cut in a wide-ranging speech on the economy earlier this week. “He can say he wants to lower taxes, but as long as he’s bought and paid for by the very people preventing those tax cuts, nothing is going to happen,” Brown charged.

In response, George Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, said the Arkansas governor is not accepting money from political action committees in the presidential race and has “a 10-year record of helping middle-class people” in his home state.

“Jerry Brown is lashing out at everything in sight to get some attention,” Stephanopoulos added. “He ought to come forward with a plan for how he’s going to rebuild America and make it work for working people instead of spending all his time tearing down. No good can come from a campaign that offers only nihilism.”