Last week, the public learned that a mystery member of Jerry Brown's campaign for California governor had called his opponent, Meg Whitman, a "whore" on a voice mail message.

The delicate situation, which has been dubbed "Whoregate," came up during Tuesday night's debate between Brown and Whitman, and the folks at 'Morning Joe' (weekdays 6 AM ET on MSNBC) expressed the opinion that Brown handled the question exceptionally poorly.

"We've heard no outrage from you about the use of that kind of language," moderator Tom Brokaw said to Brown in a clip from the debate. "Which to many women is the same as calling an African American the N-word. Have you been in charge of the investigation of your campaign to find out who is responsible for using that phrase?"

"I don't agree with the comparison, number one," a surprisingly combative Brown responded, prompting some members of the audience to groan. "Number two, this is a five-week-old private conversation picked up on a cell phone with a garbled transmission. Very hard to detect who it is."

The 'Morning Joe' gang couldn't believe what they had just heard.

"You couldn't handle that more poorly than Jerry Brown handled it," opined Mike Barnacle.

"It wasn't as though it's a trick question or unexpected," Richard Haass added. "He had weeks to prepare for it, and that's his answer? To keep the story not only alive but to make it worse. That is stunning."

(S07E18) Welcome back, Charlie. I don't mean Charlie Sheen, who came back from rehab and was back at work on the set of the show. I'm talking about Charlie Harper, who has had his man berries crushed by Chelsea and the engagement and the prospect of a June wedding at the Bel Air hotel. For the first time in a long time, Charlie had his old spunky, devil-may-care attitude back. What a relief!