International Law

An earlier generation of politicians struggled with discretion and revelation, with families like the Kennedys endlessly struggling to keep something private of their very public lives, to embody the perfect family without letting it all hang out.

Scott Brown has turned that on its head.

The soundtrack for his arrival in Washington this week might well have been the pulsing New Wave tunes of Digney Fignus, a one hit wonder whose racy 1984 MTV video ?Girl With the Curious Hand? starring a lithe young actress named Gail Huff, who is now Brown?s wife. The video, a celebration of sex and glamour, aired two years after Brown posed nude for the women?s magazine Cosmopolitan.

It went viral after Brown?s election, amassing more than 150,000 views as Huff competed temporarily online with her husband?s celebrity and with that of her daughter, an ?American Idol? finalist whose talents Brown plugged at length in his victory speech.

Polls suggest Brown?s victory was largely a rejection of the ?business as usual? of politics, as the candidate put it. What Brown offered in its place was the new normalcy of a family life lived entirely in public. He was buoyed by extraordinary personal popularity, as Democratic operatives strove largely in vain to dent what they glumly called his ?likeability.?

Brown?s arrival reflects a fundamental change in American politics, the most complete embodiment of an ethic shaped by reality TV in which there?s no such thing as overexposure and no real line between public and private.