Scott Brown’s Fairy Tales

The flies in Scott Brown’s Fairy Dust
Wicked stepfather, trading loincloth for a barn coat & Coakley

Cosmo centerfold that featured pubic hair and, as one politician said, "When you're a senator, the pubic line is one you just can't cross."

Senator Scott Brown’s life exemplifies more than one fairy tale come true.  He rose from an underprivileged, allegedly abusive upbringing to graduate Tufts University and later Boston College Law School. 

In 1982 he brokered his good looks for a $1,000 centerfold gig with Cosmopolitan magazine, the gateway to his 1980’s “career” as a model both in Boston and New York. 

Later on he traded his loincloth and wild nights at Studio 54 for the now-famous barn coat and pickup truck that drove him to the United States Senate seat left vacant upon the death of Edward M. Kennedy.

How many of us get to experience even one fairy tale fantasies in our lives, let alone three?

#1 Fairy Tale: Political Cinderfella's "wicked stepfather"

As always, the devil’s in the details.  Larry McShane, the “wicked stepfather” of the first fairy tale, called Brown’s account of those years “95 percent lies”.  The senator, of course, denied McShane’s assertion and described his time with McShane as “a small part of my life but not the only part.” 

Another fly in the fairy dust is Brown’s claim that he was molested while attending a Cape Cod Christian summer camp which the media learned was Camp Good News in Sandwich.  Brown turned a deaf ear to the public’s demand that he name his tormentor, leaving a respected Cape institution with its sterling reputation damaged and no way to defend itself.  Others who attended the camp during that era deny there was a molester prowling the rest rooms.  Nobody knows for certain but his refusal to expose a pedophile has cost Brown dearly here on Cape Cod.

From loincloth to barn coat to the US Senate, but isn't his smile a little forced these days?

#2: Cocaine & Nudity vs. Guns & Religion"

Brown’s book also brings out some details of his licentious lifestyle in 1980’s New York City.  His accounts of “piles of cocaine” and Calvin Klein’s attempt to rip off his shirt make for juicy reading, to be sure. However his career as Cosmo model and playboy don’t wear so well with his more conservative constituents.  His “guns and religion” supporters on the far right like their senators vanilla – or at least fully clothed.

#3: Coakley's flaccid campaign

The third fairy tale surprised the whole nation.  Many of our Republican friends chuckled when they heard Brown was running for against Martha Coakley for the “Kennedy seat” when he first emerged.  “Isn’t that the Cosmo centerfold?” chuckled one of our conservative friends, “I guess the party had to come up with someone to be the sacrificial lamb.” 

Little did anyone realize that Coakley would run the most flaccid campaign in history, forever earning her a place on the Democratic party’s Wall of Shame.  Little did we realize that Massachusetts’ generally liberal voters were fed up with President Obama and his Washington cronies.  The nation gasped in surprise as Brown moved up in the polls, and the President himself flew in to offer Coakley last minute support which only managed to alert voters to her distress level.

The White House some day, but Orleans and Osterville tomorrow

Protesters are expected to greet Brown in Orleans tomorrow, and maybe they'll wear these bracelets.

So now we call him Senator Brown.  Some of the more wild-eyed Republicans started talking about parallels between Brown’s meteoric rise to the national scene and the similar rise of an Illinois state senator named Barack Obama.  Blinking over their martinis they asked themselves if Brown could be cut from presidential timber. 

The far right purports to hate libertines.  So how to explain Brown’s teenage foibles and hi-jinks in his twenties?  His centerfold, though modest by today’s standards, presented a hairy problem for those trying to package Scott Brown for higher office.

The problem is, how do you reconcile the shoplifting, centerfold posing Scott Brown of the 1980’s with the barn-coated family man of the 2010’s?  How ‘bout he writes a book about his troubled childhood, replete with abusive stepfathers and the poison apple that he was molested?  Surely that would explain his bad behavior later on!  After all, he’s a victim, right?  He’s entitled to a few passes for bad behavior along the way, right?

Some of the most conservative Cape Cod Today readers – and, yes, some real right wing stalwarts read this news site – feel that this book was timed to explain away Brown’s foibles and get them out of the headlines before he faces an strong electoral challenge in 2012 and perhaps to prepare him to run for national office in the future.

Cape Codders are well known for their Yankee common sense and they’re not buying Brown’s story.  They resent his refusal to name his abuser, they resent the implication that his bad behavior is excused because he was victimized and they feel he insults their intelligence with this web of misdirection.

This Sunday Scott Brown will be peddling his book in Orleans and Osterville.  We understand he will remain fully clothed, there will be no cocaine on the tables and shoplifting absolutely will not be tolerated.  He isn’t expected to name his molester but he’ll be happy to take your money for his anthology of fairy tales.