Gone Viral

(Aug. 14, 2008) Is State Sen. Pat Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) our first local YouTube-era superstar? Several of our neighbors have tried to claw their way into Internet celebrity — brazen dope growers, Jackass-style pranksters, self-obsessed video diarists — but it appears that all of them have lacked some essential element. Maybe they were trying too hard. Because last weekend Wiggins came along and trounced them all without even trying. At the time of this writing, her video performance has been covered by the Sacramento Bee, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Napa Valley Register, News Channel 10 (Sacramento) and dozens upon dozens of websites. It is a runaway hit.

The Wiggins video consists of a two-minute excerpt from a legislative hearing last week on the subject of climate change, and the state’s response to the crisis. An anonymous Capitol-watcher posted it to YouTube last Thursday. From this perch, it has taken flight. If you haven’t yet seen it, you can pick it up on the North Coast Journal Blogthing(ncjournal.wordpress.com). But here’s a quick renactment.

The committee recognizes Pastor Robert Jones of the Oak Park United Methodist Church, located in a nearby Sacramento suburb. The pastor launches a respectful speech written in standard bureaucratese. It is in no way out of the ordinary, either in subject matter or length. He thanks the committee for the opportunity to address it, and for the good work it is doing. He ventures that people from his constituency — poor people, people of color — have a great stake in climate change. In the first place, environmental degradation is naturally harder on the poor than it is on the wealthy, who have greater means to mitigate or escape from the consequences. On the other hand, he is concerned that measures taken to combat global warming might largely fall on the backs of the poor, who will have a harder time switching to new technologies or paying new fees, and whose jobs might be most at risk. Therefore, he hopes that the committee will include the perspectives of such people as it moves forward. Also, …

Wiggins comes in from out of nowhere, interrupting from the dais. “Excuse me,” she says, words audibly slurring a bit, “but I think your arguments are bullshit.”

For a split-second, Jones looks stunned. Then, for another, he cocks his head, considering. Then he looks down, laughs, and, smiling, says “Well …” That’s as far as he gets — the committee’s chair quickly picks up the ball, assuring the pastor that his message was heard loud and clear. She says that his constituency has been and will continue to be involved in its work, and cites several examples. As she continues in this vein, the video fades to black.

So. The first thing to be noticed and dispensed with is the fact that, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, Wiggins’ office released a statement saying that the senator “deeply regrets her comments and looks forward to apologizing to the pastor personally.” It’s nice, but it’s clearly not going to cut it. For one, the public is suddenly very deeply interested. For another, the pastor himself is far from placated. He told the Bee‘s reporter that a more formal response to the incident was being planned.

Also, the Republicans, sensing their moment, have since seen fit to make the most of it. The Capitol Resource Institute — previously known for its stances against same-sex marriage, for home schooling and against communist teachers — issued a quick release as soon as the story broke, deploring Wiggins’ “vulgar language and indecorous behavior” and calling upon its supporters to flood Wiggins’ office with demands for a “public apology.” Many of the comments around the Internet took this line — that the incident was symptomatic of an elite Democratic coiterie that had grown lazy and smug in its unchallenged control of Sacramento. (A smaller faction took the line that if Wiggins had been male, no one would even have noticed.)

Lost in all the back and forth, though, is the most telling moment of the video — that is, the moment when the chairwoman of the committee, Sen. Christine Kehoe, picked up the pieces and carried on, almost without batting an eye. You get the definite sense that she wasn’t very surprised. And such, indeed, has been the unanimous follow-up reaction from people who run across Wiggins occasionally (and who, of course, demanded that their names appear nowhere in the paper). “Oh, that’s just Pat!” they say. “She’s just like that!” Some mentioned that she was hard of hearing. It didn’t seem to bear.

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