So, Carly Fiorina. I feel like that woman is really crazy and should not be a senator. But here’s some other things I do know about her.
- She really wanted HP to merge with Compaq. Really. She even fought the son of one of the founders of the company to make this thing happen, and the fight was nasty. But the merger happened, and thenĀ HP became the biggest computer manufacturer in the world. Though there was a dip for a time, the company is the biggest today, and much of that is due to her insistence on that merger. Because, really, HP computers were kind of a joke before then. Now you can’t walk through a college campus without seeing a ton of HP laptops looking sad and depressed next to the much cooler Macs.
- Walter Hewlett warned that if HP focused on the personal computer market, they would lose the lead they had in printers. Remember when HP’s printers were the best, hands down? The merger ended that. So, uh, thanks Carly?
- A lot of the shit she got as CEO of HP seemed to me, at the time, to be fueled not by her actual management, but by sexism. She was the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company and Forbes named her one of the most powerful women in America. And whenever a woman gets too powerful, people bring out the knives. Now, it may be true that she wasn’t a great CEO. But so much of the rhetoric about her at the time (that I remember) was so tinged with sexist overtones, that I always had a hard time believing she was as bad as men said she was.
- All that aside, she should not be a senator. She thinks that other Republicans are demon sheep. That’s not healthy.
I agree with you pretty fully. I worked for Kodak during this whole time, and if anything it fell further but you didn’t hear about it. I will say that there were no knives brought out against Anne Mulcahy when she daringly pulled Xerox out of the fire in this same era. We need more press about people who do their job well.
But it’s really the Meg Whitman bashing that’s got me down. It’s unseemly to spend the fortune you earned to campaign in tough times? Is that really what you’re going to go with?
I’m torn. Fiorina’s comment about Barbra Boxer’s physical appearance was the usual sexist drivel one expects from male politicians, and her “apology” was a non-apology. But is she now getting more flack about the issue because she’s a woman?
It’s hard to say. Gordon Brown sure didn’t get a pass a few months ago. Heck, we upstate New York folk have yet to forgive Ed Koch cracking wise about our Sears suits and gingham dresses back in 1981. My personal feeling is that this is more about Fiorina being an amateur and a “maverick” than being a woman.
Given what chunks of the Republican party have been like this last decade or more, I can see using “demon sheep” as metaphor. What I can’t see is how someone thinking that can have decided to stay a Republican and run as a Republican.
Unfortunately, I could see the sexism inherent in the attitudes displayed toward her ruthlessness, but I can’t get over the fact that she spied on her Board of Directors.
Just because they’re sexist dicks doesn’t mean you get to break the law…