Nicky Diaz Died For Your Sins

Sounds like the Fresno gubernatorial debate was fun:

FRESNO – The California governor's race turned bitterly personal at a debate held Saturday for Spanish-speaking audiences, as Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Democratic rival Jerry Brown slashed at each other over Whitman's hiring of an illegal immigrant housekeeper.

Questions about Nicky Diaz Santillan, who revealed Wednesday that she had worked for the Republican for nine years despite being undocumented, produced the sharpest exchange of the 60-minute debate held at Fresno State.

In the most explosive moment, Whitman faced Brown on stage and said, "Jerry, you know you should be ashamed. You and your surrogates put her deportation at risk. You put her out there. You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz at the altar of your political ambitions."

Whitman's campaign has not produced evidence that Brown collaborated with Diaz Santillan's attorney, Gloria Allred, on the case.

Brown hit back by accusing Whitman of not taking responsibility for hiring Diaz Santillan in the first place.

"Don't run for governor if you can't stand up on your own two feet and say, 'Hey I made a mistake. I'm sorry. Let's go on from here,' " Brown said. "You blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions, but you don't take accountability."

For myself, I'm impressed at the way Gloria Allred has pitched these revelations directly at the Latino electorate; pitched nice and slow right over home plate, to make a sports analogy. First there was Allred's spectacular press conference with Nicky Diaz. Then Allred waited for Meg Whitman to respond with incorrect statements and only then did she reveal the 2003 letter from the Social Security Administration. Quite damaging!

Who is this Allred?:

She was the woman who challenged the all-male membership rules of the Beverly Hills Friars Club by striding into a steam room full of naked men, holding a tape measure and singing Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?"

She successfully sued Saks Fifth Avenue for charging women more for alterations than men. She took on the Boy Scouts of America for excluding an 11-year-old girl.

And now Gloria Allred has inserted herself into the spotlight again, this time orchestrating an attack on Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman that has sparked accusations that she is doing the dirty work of Whitman's Democratic rival.

While Jerry Brown's campaign has denied involvement in the celebrity attorney's latest production, Allred is a Democratic Party partisan.

She was a delegate for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She has donated to candidates, including Brown, California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

In 2003, during California's recall campaign, Allred represented a Hollywood stuntwoman who charged that she was groped by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger back in his acting days. The case was later dropped.

In putting on news conferences this week featuring the illegal immigrant who for years worked as Whitman's housekeeper, attorney Allred demonstrated she remains a master at creating a media event.

"There are two narratives about her," said Martin Kaplan, a University of Southern California professor of media, entertainment and society. "One is that she is a champion for wronged and vulnerable women, a kind of feminist Spider-Man. The other is that she is a genius at getting attention and building her brand.

" ... You have to admire somebody who is so good at it."

...She was in classic form this week when she turned out – in pearls and red blazer – for an emotional Los Angeles news conference that gave voice to Whitman's suddenly well-known housekeeper.

On Wednesday, a tearful Nicky Diaz Santillan said Whitman laughed at her when she asked for help in obtaining legal status and "treated me as if I were not a human being."

The choreographed event came a day after Whitman's tough talk on illegal immigration in Tuesday's gubernatorial debate.

In a second press conference Thursday, Allred produced a letter from the Social Security Administration that she claimed proved Whitman knowingly employed an illegal worker.

Whitman has said the woman used falsified documents in the hiring process. Her campaign Thursday accused Allred of orchestrating a "political stunt" on behalf of Brown.

The wealthy lawyer, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg, lives regally on the Malibu oceanfront.

But she casts herself as a champion of people "treated as second-class citizens."

To me, the most damaging thing has been Allred's use of religious symbolism to deliver extra punch to Diaz' story. Latinos are largely-religious: most are Catholic, and most of the ones that aren't still follow Protestant faiths. Allred is casting Meg Whitman as Pontius Pilate, with Diaz cast as Christ. The story is easy to follow and arrestingly irresistible.

This may be one of those situations where every 'fact' may work out to Meg Whitman's benefit, but where she still loses. In a year when many Republican candidates are asking the electorate to believe President Obama is a Kenyan terrorist sympathizer, they are hoping California's Latino electorate will accept a coldly-legalistic explanation of Meg Whitman's behavior towards her longtime housekeeper. For all I know, Latinos may accept Whitman's explanation - Latinos will at least listen - but, then again, they may not. Whitman may join other 'hand-washers' in history, like our good friend Pontius Pilate. After all, as far as I can tell, Pontius Pilate did nothing wrong either, yet he is among the most-hated people in Christian tradition.

State Senator Gil Cedillo identifies the problem:

"Meg Whitman is not you or me. She is eBay," said Sen. Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who is outspoken on behalf of illegal immigrants. "She could have hired a dream team of immigration lawyers. Instead, she turns her back and says, 'I don't know you and you don't know me.'

The thing to do would have been for Meg Whitman to offer to pay for whatever kind of legal assistance Nicky Diaz needed, plus a separation allowance of some sort. I'm sure Whitman's lawyers would have screamed that Whitman would have been entangling herself even more in an untenable situation, but the fact was that Whitman was already entangled. Lawyers can sometimes offer bad advice to people who need to operate in a political environment. A graceful, not necessarily a correct, exit had to be found. Cast aside, Nicky Diaz turned to Gloria Allred. Not the best of outcomes.

The Old Confederates, the Southern aristocrats who started the Civil War, identified this problem a long time ago. They asserted that industrialization and the growth of large work forces would inevitably lead to "wage slavery", with no sense of obligation between the classes. Barbarism would surely result from the way Yankees were going. In the Old South, things were done differently: tradition and family were all important. In the Old South, someone like Diaz could appeal to their patron, in this case Whitman, and Whitman would have to do all she could to render aid. To do otherwise would be shameful to her and her family's tradition.

The Old Southerners had their own problems, of course (slavery is more barbaric than wage slavery). Still, the Old Confederates had a point. When there is such a vast gulf between the status of employer (billionaire Whitman) and employee (illegal alien Diaz), the presumption of equality breaks down, and social relations regress to an aristocratic mode. For Whitman not to render aid is shameful from an aristocratic viewpoint. The lack of aid forced Diaz to find a new patron (Allred). And since Allred is a member of her own elite, she knew exactly how Whitman would respond, and will respond in the immediate future. What did Sun Tzu say? "Know your enemy." Allred knows her enemy.

I would hate to have to fight Gloria Allred in any kind of battle. If Allred and I squabbled over a parking space, for example, twelve ninja stars (one for each of the twelve Apostles) would mysteriously appear, all of them plunging deeply into my back with a deadly hiss: thpp! thpp! thpp! I'd be dead before I could do a face plant on the pavement.