Newsweek's Jerry Adler often waxes poetic on the magazine's The Gaggle blog in a feature called "newsverse."
His most recent entry published yesterday evening deals with Tuesday's historic special election in Massachusetts, where Ted Kennedy's old seat went Republican for the first time in 58 years.
But in the midst of his poorly-metered albeit rhymed verse, Adler set about labeling Scott Brown voters and/or Bruins hockey fans who attended the January 1 game at Fenway Park, as "shmucks":
I read the news today, oh God,
About a lucky man whom no one knew.
He showed the world his hairy bod
In Cosmopolitan, when he was 22.
He drove around a pickup truck.
She didn’t notice that the world had changed.
And he shook hands with every shmuck
Who wandered by, which she thought quite deranged.
He had a name like Scott or Todd
And I recall her name was Martha Coakley
And though it still seems weird and odd
He capped her just like he was Annie Oakley.
The message is clear: Brown was a lucky, good-looking "shmuck" who won because he did the retail politicking that Coakley dismissed as "deranged." While it's true that Coakley's terrible campaigning had a role in her defeat, Adler would have Newsweek readers believe that is the sum total of her loss to a "lucky" guy best known for posing nude in Cosmo decades ago.
Keep telling yourself that, Newsweek.
