Senator Scott Brown aka Senator Centerfold is great at posing for the camera. His wife spent years reporting for WCVB channel five in Boston and was always camera ready, and his daughters, who he has declared are “looking for dates,” are clearly well-bred young women. The whole family makes a pretty picture.
Brown has created a middle-class persona with his $600 barn coat and his gas-guzzling pick-up truck. Turns out Brown began posing for the camera early in his career as a centerfold for Cosmopolitan. He claims that he did it to pay for college. Well, college must have been cheap back then, because he was paid only $1,000.
In January 2010 I called my daughter after the election to tell her about the loss and who our new senator was –she was away at college and voting in that state – she started singing that J. Geils song, “…nah nah nah nah nah nah, my senator’s a centerfold.”
I sent her this photo:
Turns out Brown took time off from school after that centerfold shoot to model in New York and hit the night club scene. Those modeling gigs gave him a little cash, but it still wouldn’t have covered college. He tells us about his hard knock life, so did he take out student loans?
.....his sister essentially talked him into entering the Cosmo contest, which offered a $1000 prize.
What happens next is fascinating, and in my opinion not a reason to think badly of him, but it sure ain't "hard knock." He gets picked as the Cosmo winner in April 1982, poses, and becomes an instant top model and a celebrity reveling in early-'80s New York night life: ushered past long lines into trendy clubs; teased by Calvin Klein at Studio 54; watching Rick James snorting cocaine. He takes a reprieve from the National Guard and a leave of absence from BC Law School (taking classes at Cardazo in NYC).
Is that a cigarette? If so the tobacco lobby loves this:
On May 24, 2012 Scott Brown voted against S 2343 a bill titled “Extends Student Loan Interest Rates” http://votesmart.org/... This bill would cost 175,000 residents in MA an additional $1,000 in student loan interests this year. hmmmm
My daughters both have substantial student loans burdens, but if they were to pose for a photo like he did for $1,000 the photo would follow them around for life. Such a photo would easily create problems as they were looked for jobs - people would think less of them for choosing to earn money by taking off their clothes. What would Brown tell his daughters if they "paid for college" by posing nude?
As a man, Brown seems to enjoy a wink and a smile at the mention of his centerfold shoot - he gets some sort of weird male pass for posing nude! And those hard-core conservatives who would have judged a woman for doing the same, simply accept that he did it money to pay for school.
At a local rally last winter I asked Elizabeth Warren if she was aware of what I believe is a looming crisis equal to the mortgage crisis: students saddled with ridiculous school loan debt that will impede their ability to buy homes or the parents who’ve taken on that debt for their kids and have put their retirement at risk. Her answer demonstrated thought interest, and an important level of empathy for dealing with this issue. And, she recognizes that some kids just wouldn’t be able to go to college with out these loans.
I asked Brown the same question a few weeks earlier at a conference for municipal officials. His response was that schools need to lower their tuition. His attitude and answer were nothing short of condescending. And a room full of over 300 officials were listening. After he answered me, one of his staff members came to me with a business card telling me, “he must have forgotten that we are trying to work with Sallie Mae … blah blah” I don’t remember the rest, all I remember is that his staff person actually told me, with several other people looking on, that Brown “forgot” that he was supposedly working on the issue. Of course he showed his actual position a few months later when he voted AGAINST a bill that would have provided college students and graduates just a little relief.
Then, on June 5, 2012 Scott Brown voted with his party against S2330, The Fair Pay Act that would add more teeth to the Lilly Ledbetter Act to insure equal pay for women. The Republicans filibustered that bill, too. Elizabeth Warren would never have voted against that bill, she understands that we need to guarantee that women are paid the same as any man who is doing the same job.
I have to wonder, is there some long-standing resentment? Did Brown somehow feel that his $1,000 was not equal to what a woman would have been paid to do a similar nude centerfold spread?
Scott's time in front of the camera is over- let's send back to the private sector.
Vote for Elizabeth Warren! My daughters need someone who understands what it is like to live in the real world, where we wear barn coats that cost whole lot less than $600 and we chose the cars we drive based on gas mileage and carbon footprints.
And will someone please explain THIS?
I mean come on! Are you kidding? Interesting they way he has sort of disappeared though, huh?
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This is someone we can trust:
SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN!!!
VOTE TUESDAY!