Via Political Wire, your feelbad audio of the day. Taegan Goddard at PW names the guy’s party; the Connecticut Post, you’ll be cheered to know, does not.

Did I forget to mention that he said this at a public hearing? Out: War on women. In: War on girls.

“After I first heard about it, I thought maybe in the broader sense maybe he was misunderstood and it may not be that big a deal,” [Connecticut House Speaker J. Brendan] Sharkey said in an interview. “But based on the audio, it’s hard to interpret it that way. It’s hard for anyone who heard the audio or was there to think it was anything other than a sexual innuendo. “I guess the best word I can use to describe this is disturbing,” Sharkey said.

Ernest Hewett, the man responsible, has now been stripped of his deputy speakership and is being pressured by Republicans to resign. His defense? He meant to say something, er, completely different:

Hewett said his remark came out wrong and he understood how it could be misconstrued. According to The Day of New London, he said Thursday: “What I meant to say was, if you are shy then I have an acre of land in the Everglades.”

Mm hmm. Here’s the audio; judge for yourself. The only thing that gives me pause is that … this guy couldn’t possibly have thought this was acceptable, right? If he’s so tone-deaf as to have meant this the way it sounds, despite a roomful of people sitting around him (all of whom seem to laugh merrily, by the way), how did he get this far in politics without detonating his career long, long ago?