The Junior Senator From Massachusetts

It hasn't been a great week for progressives, liberals, and right-thinking people of America. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations have free speech, and somehow can therefore give as much money to candidates as they want (which means conservative, iron-fisted ruling candidates will eventually take over the country for good). And in Massachusetts, a Senate seat that had had the name Kennedy attached to it for almost sixty years went to the G.O.P., pretty much dooming any hope for health-care reform. The teabaggers think they've got power, and I've spent all week like an ostrich with my head in the sand, avoiding the nightly news.

Now, I have no idea if Scott Brown, the winner in the Bay State, is a great statesman or yet another scary, certifiably insane Republican. He could be the second coming of Daniel Webster for all I know. I don't know what he stands for, although I'm sure he'll be getting lots of memos from Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and the rest of the lunatic right. But I am intrigued by one thing about him: he's the first centerfold model to be elected to the Senate.

As almost everyone knows, Brown posed for Cosmopolitan in the early 80s when he was a law student. This has been an interesting fact about him, but not in any way a problem. I ask you to imagine this, though: had Brown been a Democrat, how would that have gone? I submit that it would have been constantly brought negatively up by a Republican opponent, suggesting that he had loose morals and was thisclose to being a Communist, terrorist, or both.

But it wasn't an issue, because no self-respecting Democrat could or would take that road, because that's the kind of issue that Democrats don't give a shit about. Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican could pose naked and be talked about as presidential timber.

As Barack Obama was a trailblazer for African Americans, so Scott Brown may be for nude models. I can only hope for the day we see California Senator Pamela Anderson (alas, she can not be president--she was born in Canada).