Keep yer clothes on, Scott Brown -- Cosmo's now "picking brains over brawn"

Isn't it just like us to be trotting out -- yet again -- these ancient beefcake pictures? Sure, but ask yourself whether they aren't still the most noteworthy thing about our Scott.

by Ken

Before we get to the, er, meat of this story, could we pause for a bit of, er, dressing? Namely, Cosmo is now doing political endorsements? Huh?

It might be useful here to have some political strategists to poll on the expected impact of a Cosmo endorsement. I'm not suggesting that Cosmo readers don't vote. I bet a lot of them do. Or at least as high a precentage as that of non-Cosmo readers. Not much of a standard, I admit, but it's the one we seem to be stuck with here in the U.S.A. No, my question is whether those readers are apt to be influenced by the magazine's endorsements. If I sound skeptical, I am.

On the other hand, given Scott Brown's particular history, being snubbed by Cosmo in his challenge to NH Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, makes for irresistibly merry copy. HuffPost's headline is "Cosmo Endorses Jeanne Shaheen Over Its Former Centerfold"; USA Today's, "'Cosmo' nixes former centerfold Scott Brown for Jeanne Shaheen." And so on and on, ad -- I'm guessing -- infinitum. As far as I know, though, our own head is the only one that has tackled the urgent issue of making sure Scott keeps his clothes on.

The head on the "In the Loop" item on washingtonpost.com is "Worth a look, not a vote?":

To all the young aspiring politicians pondering the age-old question “Should I pose nude in an international women’s magazine?”: Yes, you can still have a career afterward. No, the editors cannot guarantee their support when you run for office three decades later.

Scott Brown, the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts who is hoping to return to Capitol Hill via New Hampshire, famously appeared as the centerfold in Cosmopolitan in 1982. Brown, then a 22-year-old law student at Boston College, won the magazine’s “America’s Sexiest Man” contest.

But the people at Cosmo were far more impressed with Brown’s looks back then than they are with his politics now. On Tuesday, the editors announced the magazine’s endorsement of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the incumbent Brown is challenging in a tough race. (In addition to sex tips and fashion no-nos, Cosmo started doing political endorsements for the 2014 midterms.)

“And while we wish we could support the man who once posed nude in our pages, his policy positions just aren’t as solid as his abs were in the ’80s,” the editors write. They go on to explain their support for Shaheen, noting her stances on abortion, equal pay and other issues of women’s rights.

“Scott Brown may have been Cosmopolitan’s ‘sexiest man’ in 1982, but in 2014, we’re picking brains over brawn — and that’s Jeanne Shaheen,” they conclude.

Now, I like to think I yield to no one in my appreciation of hotness, and our Scott was pretty hot for a 50-something -- in fact, arguably hotter than he looked back in 1982 -- when, in January 2011, he got Massachusetts voters to making him the elected successor to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. And if he hadn't been pretty hot, I don't think there's any chance he could have pulled it off. But I never understood why it was an issue then. Did voters imagine he was going to have sex with them?

Gosh, was that really only January 2011? It seems so long ago -- long enough that Massachusetts voters have already had and exercised their chance to express second thoughts. In fairness, he still got 46.3 percent of the vote, but now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren got the remaining 53.7 percent. Jeanne Shaheen isn't Elizabeth Warren, but then, the 2014 Scott Brown isn't the 2011 Scott Brown, even apart from his deft magic-carpet ride to New Hampshire. Then again, if New Hampshire voters want a dullard, go-along Republican senator, that's their choice.

Scott just has to hope Cosmo doesn't have a lot of pull with NH voters.

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