Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has apologized for calling a top adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a "whore."
"I offer my sincere apology to Linda Robertson, an adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke," Grayson said in an emailed statement. "I did not intend to use a term that is often, and correctly, seen as disrespectful of women."
The term is an insult to whomever it is aimed at, my dear Congressman Grayson. The technical term is prostitute, which is only not insulting when describing a person engaged in the sex trade.
In the emailed statement, Grayson gave further context to the comment, saying it was made "last month in the context of the debate over whether the Federal Reserve should be independently audited, was inappropriate, and I apologize."
Grayson's apology is the latest in a string of incendiary statements by the Florida congressman, who in the past month has accused Republicans of wanting people to "die" rather than get better health care and has compared the health care crisis to a "holocaust."
Republicans circulated the audio Monday afternoon of Grayson calling Robertson a "K Street whore." Todd Jurkowski, Grayson's spokesperson, initially defended the remark by saying it was in reference to her time as the top lobbyist for Enron. He also pointed to an alternate definition in a dictionary.
"The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life," Jurkowski wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. "The second definition of 'whore' in the American Heritage Dictionary is 'A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.'"
Perhaps it would help were Congressman Grayson to explain exactly how it is that Ms Robertson compromised her principles...if he can.
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