--*Mass. Backwards

On Tuesday night, the voters of Massachusetts voted to replace the late Sen. Teddy Kennedy, a longtime liberal stalwart and ardent health care reformer, with a conservative upstart cheered on by the Tea Party movement, a candidate who has vowed to vote against health care reform in the Congress. His nay vote could destroy the Democrats' plans for reform and lay waste to Kennedy's signature issue by breaking the party's filibuster proof 60-seat majority.

Why did the people of Massachusetts, which is a long-time liberal stronghold, suddenly decide to go with Republican candidate Scott Brown?

--*Brown has done everything he can to give the people of Massachusetts universal health care, and he even loves them so much he's going to go one step further and deny it to everybody else.

--*He promised them change, any kind of change. Waterboarding kind of change.

--*Massachusetts is home to a large number of independent voters who hate politics, lies and game playing. Most of all, they hate the game of "Got yer nose." They always fall for that. Not this time. They will not fall for that again ... d'oh!

--*Independents pride themselves on their skepticism. Which is why they have believed everything Glenn Beck has told them all year about communist infiltration of our bodily fluids. And you can take that to the bank.

--*The people of Massachusetts are fed up with high unemployment and rightly blame the Obama administration for causing the recession when he took office eight years ago or something like that.

--*The people of Massachusetts understand that it is not the government's job to interfere with the free market. "And by the way," they ask, "why hasn't the government given me a job yet when communist renegade leader Pol Pot already would have by now?"

--*The people of Massachusetts understand that employment is a lagging indicator and usually starts to increase at the tail end of a recession, after market rebounds like the one we're seeing now. No wait. They don't understand that. Never mind. Throw the bums out! Faster, Pussycat! Kill, kill!

--*There were many reports of light snow in Massachusetts on election night. Only a crazy jackass would drive in the snow.

--*The Democratic candidate, a supposed shoo-in named Martha Coakley, was widely thought to have run a lackluster campaign and pundits complained that her message was little more than "I'm a Democrat." Coakley's defenders were obviously too hopeful that, weak as her message was, it stood a good chance against the whole "I want to waterboard Arabs again" message.

--*Massachusetts is a hotbed of political independents and they want to take a chance on Brown, hoping that he, like them, has their rugged iconoclastic streak: after all, he is against cap and trade; he believes in cutting taxes during a huge budget crisis; he opposes amnesty for immigrants; he opposes gay marriage; he opposes a tax on banks that have recorded huge profits after taking government stimulus money to stay afloat; and he has the Tea Party seal of approval. In fact, he's so independent he doesn't hold any of the beliefs of the people he's representing.

--*Bay Staters are all sure that the first thing a young Republican Senator with no friends in Congress is going to do is start playing by his own rules and burning bridges with Republican leaders just to show everybody how politically open minded he is. Yeah, <em>that's</em> really going to happen.

--*They were drunk?

--*Why Was It So Sad?

This week saw the passing of Edward M. Kennedy, patriarch of the legendary Kennedy political dynasty and the third-longest serving senator in U.S. history. Why is Kennedy's death such a poignant moment in U.S. history?

--*Because it was like he was one of us.

--*Because he was not one of us. He was better.

--*Because he was going to give us universal health care.

--*Because he was such a good kisser.

--*Because he was mainly a funny drunk and not so much a mean-spirited drunk.

--*Because sex with a powerful political figure feels that much more powerful, and because he offered that gift so freely to so many.

--*Because he was able to overcome partisanship and seek compromise, and to play the game of politics shrewdly enough that it sometimes fomented progress, prosperity and equality for all.

--*... doing so with a lot of alcohol lubrication and sexual intercourse along the way--just as much as human progress demanded it of his poor, oversexed body.

--*Because a man who can pass civil rights legislation one minute and then the next be widely photographed having sex on a motorboat for the delectation of European paparazzi is just too damn fun to live without.

--*Because his fiery rhetorical style hearkened back to a less cynical time when politicians could still be heroes.

--*... back when we still bought into that kind of thing.

--*Because he got the COBRA Act passed, something that often went unnoticed when so much of the talk was about his trouser snake.

--*Because his greatness was curtailed by his deep human flaws, and that reminded us of our own fragile humanity.

--*... or just made the stupider among us feel superior.

--*... which, you gotta admit, is one of the less-heralded and more necessary talents of great leaders, given how many stupid people there actually are and how many guns they own.

--*Because he was the only one among his brothers to grow old, the designated mourner for their age of idealism, elegance, sophistication and daring.

--*And because, in the end, for all that, you don't even get a lousy t-shirt.