Posted on 01/31/2010 9:48:01 AM PST by kristinn
In an interview broadcast on ABC News' This Week, Barbara Walters grilled Senator-elect Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, over his semi-nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982. Walters told Brown he was becoming known as "that nude magazine guy" and insinuated he was becoming a "joke."
Unmentioned by Walters was that she had an adulterous affair with the last Republican senator from Massachusetts, Ed Brooke, in the 1970s, several years before Brown appeared in Cosmo.
Walters herself revealed the affair in her 2008 autobiography, Auditions. The New York Daily News reported on her revelation:
At the time, the twice-divorced Walters was a rising television news star and co-host of the "Today" show. When her lover, who's now 88, told the newswoman she was the oldest woman he had ever been with, she wanted to say - but never did - "Oh yeah? Well you are the blackest man I have ever been with," Walters writes.
Brooke, the first black member of the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, was so in love with Walters he told his wife he wanted a divorce.
Enraged, his wife tried to reveal the affair to the National Enquirer, Walters writes. A phone call from a worried friend reminding Walters that Brooke was up for reelection the next year and that her job could be in jeopardy persuaded Walters to call it quits.
"I slowly began asking myself if we could ever be married. Would such a marriage destroy his career? Would it destroy mine?" Walters wonders in the book.
Walters led off her interview with Brown by bringing up a shop lifting arrest when he was twelve-years-old followed by a mention of the Cosmo photo:
So you have a fascinating resume. Let -- let me -- and just in case some people don't know it. At 12 you were arrested for shop lifting?
BROWN: Right down the street.
WALTERS: You remember the place? OK.
BROWN: I do.
WALTERS: At 22 you posed nude for Cosmopolitan Magazine. For the past 30 years you've been in the National Guard, and you have the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. The past six years you've been a state senator, and now as the newly elected Republican senator from Massachusetts. You are the new star. I just saw that when I traveled a little bit with you.
What do you most want to accomplish? What's your passion?
Brown didn't take the bait to talk about the Cosmo photo, but he fell into Walters' trap later in the interview, giving her an opening to call him "that nude magazine guy" and insinuate that he would become a "joke" of a senator:
WALTERS: In an interview to the Boston Globe back in 1982, you said, "Sometimes...
BROWN: Marian Christy, if I'm not mistaken.
WALTERS: Yeah. "Sometimes, I think I'm being tested by a higher being. When things are going great, I think of it as a reward from heaven."
Do you still think your winning is a reward from heaven?
BROWN: Obviously, I was 22 years old there and thrust in the spotlight because of what I did with the Cosmo thing.
I believe in God, and I am very thankful for the things that I've, you know, been blessed with. Is there -- is there a higher being that's looking out for people? I hope so. I'm hopeful.
WALTERS: The Cosmopolitan Magazine. Well it just so happens, I have it.
BROWN: Great. I'm sure you do.
WALTERS: Yeah.
BROWN: Really? You're kidding, right?
WALTERS: Here. I really do. I have the magazine.
BROWN: Oh, yeah. The good old days. Do you want me to sign it?
(LAUGHTER)
WALTERS: Actually -- I want you -- well, it's a thought. I could -- I could then sell it for a lot.
BROWN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
WALTERS: But this is...
BROWN: Yeah.
WALTERS: ... the actual picture.
BROWN: Yes.
WALTERS: It's a -- it's a...
BROWN: I wish I still looked like that.
WALTERS: Well I'm not going to ask you to prove it. But this is pretty -- this is pretty raw stuff. OK. So...
BROWN: That's Cosmo -- 1982 Cosmo. Let's not get carried away here.
WALTERS: But at the economic conference in Davos, some of the foreign leaders -- that just took place last week -- were referring to you as that "nude magazine guy."
(LAUGHTER)
WALTERS: Were you worried -- or are you worried that this can make you a little bit of a joke?
BROWN: No. I was 22 years old. My -- my grandmother saw it. She laughed. You know, you have to have a sense -- have to have sense of humor about yourself. It wasn't Playgirl. It was Cosmo. You know being Bert Reynolds -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Davidson, David Hasselhoff also did it. And I'm the -- the only non, you know, famous person who did it back then.
WALTERS: What would you say if one of your daughters came to you and said, "Dad I want to pose nude?"
BROWN: Well I would leave it up to their discretion. I don't think that's in the -- in the cards though.
WALTERS: You know some women have said to me, "If a woman did a nude centerfold spread" -- even if it was more than 20 years ago -- they're not sure that she would be elected senator, because there's a double standard. What do you think?
BROWN: I think if someone is qualified, regardless of what they did in their youth -- we all make mistakes. I'm not perfect. And do I regret doing that? No. Cause if I hadn't done that, I never would have been sitting here with you. It's all connected. So is there a double standard? I hope not. If someone is qualified to do the job, they should be able to do it, regardless of what they've done in their past.
Walters carried her obsession with Brown's Cosmo photo (and the magazine) to the roundtable discussion she hosted on This Week, leading off with the photo:
WALTERS: Well, now let's bring in our roundtable. George Will, Arianna Huffington from "The Huffington Post," Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and columnist for the "New York Times," and Roger Ailes. And this is rather unusual for us and I think for him because Mr. Ailes is the CEO and president of FOX News and this is his first visit with ABC News on "This Week."
AILES: I was waiting for HD. I look so much better.
WALTERS: I also -- you just said that when Scott Brown for $1,000 for the cosmopolitan nude photograph, you would have done it for less.
AILES: 1982, the guy's getting out of college and someone gives him $1,000 and he can cover himself up. I don't know, $100, I'd do it.
After getting the panel's take on Brown, Walters brought up the Cosmo photo yet again, this time to brag that she was featured in the same issue, as she held up the magazine to the camera:
WALTERS: We're going to come back, and we have much more time to talk about this, but we're going to have to pause. But before we do, in the interest of full disclosure, that Cosmopolitan picture that you saw of Scott Brown, well, to my amazement, in the same issue, is...
(UNKNOWN): Barbara Walters. There we go.
WALTERS: But (inaudible) dressed. There we go. There we are. OK? So much for that.
Now, when we come back, back to more serious subjects with all of you. We'll be right back.
Brown was too much of a gentleman to bring up Walters' sleazy past as she tried to denigrate him as a joke. Fair enough.
Noone on the roundtable was going to risk getting banned from This Week by mentioning the unmentionable.
Walters certainly wasn't going to remind viewers of her affair with Brooke as it would have negated her strategy to smear Brown.
So it gets mentioned on Free Republic, in the interest of keeping the public fully informed.
That old hag still alive??
Scott Brown is a class act. God is Blessing him. And she tries to tear that down.
What have they got to gain?
sigh!
Ping
BaBa WaWa appears to be obsessed with Brown’s nude photo. Give it up Babs!
The woman is a hypocritical joke. She fancies herself as part of some American elite that should tell us what we should do.
They are going to try to do to Brown what they did to Sarah Palin. Try to make a joke out of him. It started last night on Saturday Night Live. MSM are a buch disgusting pieces of garbage.
Who hasn’t Barbara Walters screwed?
Has she grilled Robert Byrd yet about his KKK membership?
bookmark
She was alot nicer to Castro.
Not surprising - many liberals cozy up to our enemies and treat fellow americans as if they’re the enemy.
It makes them “smart” donchyaknow.
Twelve ? Twelve years old ? She brings up something that happened to a twelve year old?
That is RIDICULOUS.
Showing off her petite figure and her botox and plastic surgery successes...
Same old hag underneath though!
Hey, Baba Wawa: Scott Brown is IMPORTANT!!!!
And those of us citizens who voted for him, and/or contributed to his campaign, are IMPORTANT, too!!!!
Don’t try to trivialize us by calling Scott Brown “that nude magazine guy”!!!!
The same goes for the New World Order world-wreckers at Davos. We’re IMPORTANT, and you have to listen to us!!!!
Fixed it for ya'
Well, for a minute she forgot he was black
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