Bring it on.

– Sen. Scott Brown

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) won the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat on January 19, 2010.  He pledged to vote against the health care legislation Sen. Kennedy had worked his entire career to achieve.  He voted against extending unemployment benefits and other welfare benefits.  On election night, he infamously told the crowd that his two beautiful daughters are available.

He won his seat by pandering to the Tea Party and playing the role of underdog.  Now, he’s peddling a book, Against All Odds:  My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances.  It’s a memoir about being sexually molested and abused and committing the crimes of theft and arson as a child.  He stole food from the local A&P, but he doesn’t think folks need welfare anymore.  He stole a suit to wear to a school dance and record albums.  He got busted for the latter crime, and Judge Samuel Zoll is credited for turning around the life of a juvenile delinquent.

He also credits Judy Patterson, a social studies teacher, who lectured him about speaking disrespectfully to a female student.  His basketball coach helped him get a scholarship to Tufts University.  He claims basketball was his therapy and salvation.  He frequently broke into the school gym to shoot hoops to work off his anger, and he told his secrets to the ball at night in bed.

The Boston Globe reported that Sen. Brown intends to leverage his book tour to maximize his re-election efforts.  The Washington Post reported that he is the most popular politician in one of the country’s bluest states.  He kicked off his book tour with an interview on 60 Minutes which you can watch by clicking on the link or you can read a transcript at this link.

I don’t have a lot of respect for a guy who votes against welfare benefits while sobbing in his memoir:

I was . . . ravenously hungry, to the point where my stomach would often ache, and I would sit on the couch with my knees drawn up to my chest, as if I could physically shrink the space between my lungs and my abdomen.

The Washington Post in their critique of the book went on to say:

As a survivor, he answers to his own blunt ideology of self-preservation.

Sen. Brown funded law school at Boston College Law School by modeling.  He was featured as one of Cosmopolitan Magazine’s sexiest men:

He met his wife Gail Huff, an ABC correspondent, via modeling gigs.  He joined the Massachusetts National Guard and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the JAG corps.  According to Time‘s mini-biography, the senator owns a home and three condos in Massachusetts as well as another home in Rye, New Hampshire and a time share in Aruba. 

Some political pundits have called him a Reagan Republican.  In some respects, I think this is accurate.  He certainly has the “fuck you, I got mine” attitude of the Reagan years.  I was so excited to hear that a Republican U.S. Senator broke the silence about sexual and child abuse.  But, I was equally disappointed that his childhood experiences didn’t leave him with more compassion for people now walking in his shoes.  He grinned and seemed to be bragging on 60 Minutes about his youthful criminal past without expressing a drop of remorse about the losses to the business and property owners. 

That’s why I didn’t buy the book.  You can read chapter one on MSNBC’s website.