Meg Whitman
The news could not have been much worse for Meg Whitman this week, with new polls showing her 50 point lead two months ago has plummeted into the single digits. Not one to rest on her laurels (or checkbook), Whitman promptly donated her campaign another $4 million, raising her total personal expenditure to $68 million.
Lindsay Lohan
Inexplicably, but not unsurprisingly, Lohan chose to travel to Cannes to promote her new film rather than deal with her snowballing legal problems at home. After missing her scheduled court appearance this week due to volcanic ash and an allegedly stolen passport, LiLo had a bench warrant issued for her arrest upon returning to the US.. Bail was promptly paid, at least sparing her the media spectacle of getting arrested at the airport upon her return. However, Lohan was Lohan is now prohibited from drinking any alcohol, required to wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet and to submit to random weekly drug testing.
The barrage of pictures surfacing on the internet of her partying in France, including some which allegedly showed her "next to what looks like several lines of cocaine and holding something that appears to be rolled up paper" could not have helped her case much. The world waits for her triumphant return to face the judge on Monday.
Schwarzenegger
Giving new meaning to the term "lame duck", Schwarzenegger's plan to fix the budget by eliminating California's welfare program was almost universally panned, even by the Republican candidates jockeying to succeed him in November. Later in the week, new polls would find his approval rating at 23%, the lowest of his tenure.
United Airlines
It is bad PR for an airline to have to make an emergency landing due to a cockpit fire. It is even worse when the plane is filled with media and network bigwigs making their way to New York for the upfronts. And worse still when it happens twice in one week. This was reportedly the case when a second United flight carrying LA based entertainment industry execs on their way to the upfronts made an emergency landing in Las Vegas due to, you guessed it, smoke in the cockpit. They were put on another United plane a few hours later and landed without incident at JFK.