Just a quick post on this because I couldn’t find a way to condense it down to 140 characters. About ten minutes ago, some of the hacks on the campaign trail started tweeting things like “Oh dear” and “Big gaffe from Gordon”. A couple of minutes later it became clear that Gordon Brown had left his mic on when he got back into the car after meeting a woman who had criticised him in Rochdale. Neutral opinion seemed to think the encounter went well, but apparently Gordon thought it was a ‘disaster’ and that the woman was ‘bigoted’.
This obviously isn’t good, and is probably the biggest ‘gaffe’ from one of the leader’s yet. It will probably get coverage in the top sections of the nightly news programmes, and front-page on some of the Tabloids tomorrrow. The twittersphere will go ballistic. I can see some of the usual Tory types mad already. In fact, it will probably become the main topic of discussion amongst tweeters for much of the rest of the day (supposing Cameron doesn’t accidentally on purpose punch a small child and steal her lollipop…)
But I don’t think it will really matter. The echo-chamber of the online world is just that – and it blows these things out of proportion… I may hide while #BigotGate (as coined by @SamuelCoats) blows itself out…
UPDATE: Just to add, my view is that this is best dealt with by apologising quickly – privately on the phone immediately, and then publicly at Gordon’s next event. Cite the high-octane stresses of the campaign.
Whilst I don’t disagree with you, I very much have the impression that had this been Cameron of Clegg’s gaffe, you’d be in the vanguard of the outspoken Twitterati pointing out how indicative this comment is of their hidden nature, or something.
I dunno. It rather depends – if it spoke to a deeper narrative about the Tory party maybe – so if it was Cameron getting into a car saying “What a disaster, bloody faggots” or something…
But even then, my point would stand – the Twittersphere/rolling news blows these things wildly out of proportion.