The Scott Brown Harassment Lawsuit: Gawker's Non-Story

More pretend news from the world of blogs and other disreputable online infotainment hucksters. Gawker has uncovered a defamation lawsuit filed in 2000 against Scott Brown. Nothing like a shady non-story to keep Thursday afternoon interesting.

Hamilton Nolan, who wrote the piece, is shocked—shocked—that the Democrats didn't bring up the lawsuit during the January's U.S. Senate election that sent Brown to Capitol Hill. (For our part, we're shocked by the other things the Democrats didn't bring up—like the fact that they were running for the seat.) But why would the Democrats have made a big deal about the lawsuit? It was dismissed in Brown's favor a week after it was filed.

The timeline goes like this. In 1988, Jennifer Firth, a Wrentham selectwoman, worked on Scott Brown's state senate campaign. Sexy things did or did not transpire between Firth and Brown, and she quit the campaign. Two years later, Firth filed suit against Brown, alleging sexual harassment and a pattern of official and unofficial regular harassment, including defamation, the basis of the suit. A few days later, her attorney quit the case, claiming that Firth's allegations lacked "good grounds," and the judge dismissed the suit with prejudice.

That means that Brown won.

Now, we all know how effective the Democrats have been when it comes to marshaling unproven allegations of sexual harassment against male Republican politicians. After all, it was how they kept Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court and Arnold Schwarzenegger out of the California governor's mansion, right? There's no way that such a strategy can backfire.

We're all feminists at Bostonist, so it's difficult for us to admit this, but the electorate does not care about sexual harassment—especially when the alleged harassers are manly Republicans who drive trucks. The American imagination is still overwhelmingly dominated by images and ideals of male supremacy and its counterpart—male supremacy thwarted. For many, a male politician who doesn't sexually harass anybody is something of a sissy. (Note: This doesn't apply to male politicians who allegedly harass other dudes.)

So, no, we're not shocked that the Democrats didn't unearth and publicize this lawsuit. It would only have played into Brown's macho man act—a poor, white podunk at the mercy of an emasculating harpy. Actually, given how bad Martha Coakley's campaign was, we wouldn't have been surprised if they had tried that.