Our beef heah

When my spouse starts to grumble about the conduct of her anointed candidate, you may take it for granted that said candidate is knee deep in shit. The anointed in this case is Elizabeth Warren.

Let's get this straight: The "Native American" riff is journalistic manure of the first water. So was the Swift Boat issue. If Warren and her supporters have the slightest idea that a manufactured non-issue will have no legs because it is a non-issue, I suggest they go have a talk with John Kerry. But Warren seems to act, first and worst, like the anointed. Progressives in Massachusetts do not need Coakley Part Deux, handing a Senate seat to an undistinguished nonentity out of misplaced entitlement. Second, she recalls Lincoln's description of a defeated Union general: "stunned and confused, like a duck hit on the head." Has this woman no advisor who can explain that bullshit forms part of any campaign?

When last I looked, we had all stumbled into the 21st Century. Why doesn't Warren challenge Brown to a DNA sampling, to establish the purity of both candidates? Hah. I identify Welsh first, Irish second, and recognise that a lot of dogs jumped over a lot of fences on the way to that identification. That includes a dose of Swamp Yankee, and that may well have brought any number of racial ingredients into the pie. My y-chromosomes may be a direct descent from the Stone Age, but I bet my mitochondrial side (when I can afford to test it) would be much more diverse. Warren's DNA is likely diverse; so perhaps is Brown's. Good grief, maybe a DNA test would reveal signs of intelligent life among Boston's news media. (We can always hope.)

Not that there's anything *wrong* with that

Scott Brown seems to have let the god thing go to his head this week. First we hear that he sorta kinda forgot his election night convo with Ms. Palin. Forgetting his talk with the goddess is one thing: admitting it is another. That's the sort of faux pas that would go into any politician's little book of retribution, even someone more forgiving than the queen of the snows.

That got buried in tactful coverage of Brown's decision that he did not want to wait until February 11 to be sworn in, but wished to be sworn in today. Those of us who have raised children easily recognise the the refrain of "I wanna go NOW."Even the most friendly of media could find no other verb for his action than "demand." Evidently he's getting his wish from the permissive parents of the Senate.

Perhaps. The Senate is an august body with a deep respect for tradition, protocol and above all, seniority. The spectacle of its most junior member, Greek god though he may be, giving orders to the rest of the body is very likely going into 99 other little books of retribution. Mr. Brown will shortly discover that he has other things to do than vote. His committee assignments will be the most public sign of retribution. Less obvious will be his office assignment. There are hardly worse offices in the world than those typically assigned to junior Senators. Obama, even though he had behaved himself reasonably well, had a concrete square in the basement. If Brown gets something down the hall next to the furnaces, that may be a hint that he has overreached.

It may be that Brown is confused about offices and eras. In Tudor England there was a much-sought-after office called Groom of the Stool. The job of the Groom was to wipe the royal arse after the royal bowel movement. Oddly enough, the job was prized, chiefly because of the intimacy one had with the King.

Memo to Brown: arse-wiping has come down in the world since the 16th century. You would be wise to look into every dimension of your new job before you open your mouth again.