WaPo's Quinn: Scott Brown Success Due to '80s Semi-Nude Photo Shoot

The special election in Massachusetts is sure to be a close one. Should Republican Scott Brown prevail, however, the liberal media will have a host of ways to explain away the election as an anomaly and by no means a referendum on either the president or his legislative accomplishments (or lack thereof).

Perhaps one of the most absurd instances of this thinking came on last night's "O'Reilly Factor" where Washington Post veteran writer Sally Quinn actually attributed Brown's meteoric rise to, wait for it, a semi-nude photo shoot he did for Cosmopolitan magazine--a full 28 years ago (video and partial transcript below the fold - h/t Jim Hoft).

Quinn postulated that the shoot gave the "hunk" Brown a boost in name recognition before the election. O'Reilly, for his part, called Quinn out on how outlandish she sounded.

QUINN: I think that there are a number of factors here. It’s not quite as black and white as it may seem. First of all Scott Brown is a hunk. And, I think that the fact that he posed semi-nude in a magazine gave him a huge advantage in terms of public recognition.

O'REILLY: Wasn't that when he was one year old? One or two years old? One of those baby pictures? Come on. Come on, Ms. Quinn, you can't sit there and tell me, the guy does this in 1982 for Cosmo, this gives him a huge advantage in 2010. When does the statute of limitations run out on belly buttons? I mean, when does that happen?

QUINN: Did I criticize him? No. [crosstalk] Name recognition, that's all. It made him a recognizable public figure, which he was not before.

Actually, Ms. Quinn, you did criticize him by suggesting that his rise to prominence is due above all else to an appearance in a magazine almost thirty years ago--not to his personal or political appeal to the voters of Massachusetts.

Should Brown carry the day, we will probably hear more of such nonsense. Liberals will pull out all the stops to render a Republican victory irrelevant or anomalous.