Crazy like a (naked, truck-driving) fox

At first glance, it might appear to have been a mistake for Massachusetts Senator Cosmo TruckNutz to wrap his sinewy arms around Obama’s socialist jobs bill on Monday. As chronicled here, formerly smitten teabaggy fans went berserk on the senator’s Facebook page—to the point where his post on the topic had to be removed.

But the vote was actually a brilliant move. Why? Because the ensuing brouhaha served as a distraction for the potentially far more damaging revelations about Brown that came out on the same day in this New York Times piece.

Disclaimer: Generally speaking, we libtards don’t give a shit what a man used to do for a living or what he chose to wear for a night on the town back in the 80s. But we’re not Brown’s target audience. He didn’t buy his barn coat and yammer endlessly about his pickup to impress us.

It’s unlikely they read the NYT at the Wrentham Moose Lodge, but had this stuff been discussed as widely as the jobs bill “betrayal,” Brown’s teabagger fans would’ve been reenacting the reveal scene from The Crying Game for realz.

“We’re in the famous truck,” he pointed out, needlessly. “It’s a regular truck.” Yes and no. As Arianna, the younger of his two daughters, told me, he originally purchased it not so he could haul lumber but so he could attach it to a trailer bearing her horse. He soon abandoned that plan. “It’s scary pulling a trailer,” he said…

Excuse me, Fraidycat McFraidysome? I’m a girl, and I’ve been driving trucks with gigantic boats attached to them since the day I got my learner’s permit. In TeaMerka, real men aren’t afraid to haul trailers.

In addition to revealing that the famous truck was employed not for hauling lumber but to facilitate participation in The Sport of Kings, young Ms. Brown (who apparently wasn’t done settling scores for that “available” remark) dropped another bombshell:

Arianna told me that he showed up for his first real date with her mother, Gail Huff, a TV newscaster to whom he has been married for more than 23 years, in pink leather shorts. It’s family lore.

The pinkish color drained from his face when I asked him about it during a conversation in his campaign office just before we took off in the truck. He clarified that the shorts weren’t something that he went out and purchased — it wasn’t like that at all. “I did the couture shows, and instead of paying in cash, they paid in clothes,” he said. “And one of the things I had to wear were leather shorts. And these happened to be pink.”

As he told the story, he seemed, almost in spite of himself, to get into it. “If I wore these now,” he said, “I’d get shot. But it was the ’80s. Pastels were in. It was all pastel-y.”

Nice try, Pinky McPinksome, but Teabag Americans—especially male ones—most certainly did not prance around in $750 pink leather shorts, even in the 80s. The more adventurous might have tried to effect a Miami Vice look with a light pink Armani knock-off jacket over a contrasting color t-shirt. But pink leather shorts? Not unless you’re one of the Pet Shop Boys or a member of The Culture Club.

Oh, and couture shows? Really? Then it gets worse:

But more striking than the crowd’s ardor was the way Brown handled it. Once near him, almost every person held up a digital camera and paused, perplexed by the challenge of simultaneously taking a picture and being in it. Brown, a lefty, used that hand to grab the camera and, without letting go of the Sharpie also in his clutch, extended his left arm, pulled the person close with his right arm, leaned back and snapped the shot of the two of them. He did this ad nauseam and never bobbled the camera, a feat that struck me as superhuman until Maggie Trichon explained that Brown worked extensively as a hand model. He had to become expert at using his flawlessly maintained fingers to hold an electronic device or other object for as long as an hour.

Did you keep those hands in a bariatric chamber, Lefty McZoolander? Jesus J. Christ sashaying down a catwalk in a gold lamé tunic. Again, I don’t care if my senator conducts the people’s business in a purple leotard, but I guaran-damn-tee you the teabaggers do. Which is why Cosmo von TruckNutz Zoolander must’ve dropped to his knees and gave thanks to merciful god when that jobs bill vote came along and buried the NYT piece.

Wingnuts are the world’s worst shoppers. You send them to the store for a genial small government pitchman to backstop the Carter years, and they come back with a tax-slashing spendthrift who triples the national deficit. You specifically ask for a brush clearin’ cowpoke, and they bring home a male cheerleader from a snooty prep school. Honest to god, these people never learn.

But as a man who has spent a lifetime crafting images, TruckNutz learned long ago that perception is what matters, particularly among the teabaggers. As has been repeatedly pointed out here and elsewhere, the teabaggers aren’t some newly awakened coalition of concerned citizens—they’re the Bush dead-enders rebranded.

Senator TruckNutz knows wingnuts tend to focus on image, as the deification of “deficit hawk” Reagan and ongoing rehabilitation of the disastrous G.W. Bush illustrate. He understands it will be a lot easier for them to forget policy heresy than a blemish on the image. The reaction of this Brown groupie in the NYT piece kinda says it all:

Ruth Eldredge, 49, said she had decided on her dream ticket for 2012: Romney for president and Brown for vice president, with a promise that they’d make Palin secretary of state. “They’d be so good-looking that people would just love us,” she said, meaning Republicans. “They’re beautiful!”

And really, does anything else matter?

Posted by Betty Cracker on 02/25/10 at 06:45 AM • Permalink

Sorry, commenting is closed for this post.