Brian Schweitzer is Not PC, or even Just C

Speaking of possible 2016 Democratic presidential competitors, how about former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer? It seems like, in two paragraphs of a National Journal article, he's pretty much caught in flagrante delicto with the proverbial pooch.  The paragraphs in question are these:

This was the week that Sen. Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse the CIA of spying on congressional staffers investigating the agency's treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration. Schweitzer is incredulous that Feinstein—considered by her critics to be too close to the intelligence community—was now criticizing the agency. "She was the woman who was standing under the streetlight with her dress pulled all the way up over her knees, and now she says, 'I'm a nun,' when it comes to this spying!" he says. Then, he adds, quickly, "I mean, maybe that's the wrong metaphor—but she was all in!" 

(It wasn't the only time Schweitzer was unable to hold his tongue. Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this ... men in the South, they are a little effeminate," he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, "They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I'm fine with gay people, that's all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he's not, I think, so I don't know. Again, I couldn't care less. I'm accepting.")

It's really hard to pack more wrong in as brief a space. I'm skeptical of Sen. Feinstein's transparency regarding safeguarding  US citizens' privacy vis a vis the NSA and CIA, too, and think she has a tendency (like her expresson of surprise at the outset of the Bergdahl transfer--once it looked like it might be politically unpopular) to expedient evasiveness, but likening her to a prostitute is pure sexism and pretty crass. And I really can't imagine what was in his mind when he implied that Southern men seemed...effeminate? (I hope Brian Schweitzer will remember if he's considering running for president, that a southern man don't need him around, anyhow.) For one thing, it's an oddly personal remark about a fellow politician, for another, he generalized to the males of a whole geographic region, and then--well, the whole thing is alienating to progressives because--"effeminate"? So? Was that intended as a slur? (And somehow one is not "regular" if one is either "southern" or "effeminate". Whew.)

Now, that sort of talk might suit him to being a media personality (and there is here a loss to the political world, because he did have interesting things to say about foreign policy, particularly the Middle East situation, and an eclectic domestic portfolio that might have bridged the red-state/blue state gap), but it doesn't really cut it on the national political stage. It's not that he wasn't PC--his remarks would seem inappropriate I think regardless of politics.   They were just very incorrect in general.