While Ontario voters heads to the polls, they can be grateful - or maybe disappointed - that their election campaign was strictly free of such petty distractions as sniping about nude spreads in Cosmo. (Mind you, they did get a 'sexiest candidate' competition.)
During a televised debate between Democratic candidates for the Massachusetts's senate seat, the moderator posed this questions to Harvard law professor, Elizabeth Warren: "To help pay for his law school education, (Massachusetts Republican Senator) Scott Brown posed for Cosmopolitan: How did you pay for your education?"
"I kept my clothes on," she joked, and went on to listen the variety of jobs she held down to pay for tuition. On WZLX radio in Boston, Mr. Brown, the incumbent, was asked: "Have you officially responded to Elizabeth Warren's comment about how she didn't take her clothes off?
"Thank God!" Brown replied, to apparent guffaws of agreement.
"That's what I said!" the host responded. "Hey look, can you blame a good-looking guy for, for – you know."
The two camps rose up in indignation: Who was Ms. Warren to mock Mr. Brown for scraping through college by showcasing his assets? The senator's campaign manager Jim Barnett said: "It's elitist of Professor Warren to look down at the decisions Scott Brown made to put himself through college and rise above the circumstances of his life."
And who was Mr. Brown to attack a successful woman on the basis of her looks? Sen. Brown's comments are the kind of thing you would expect to hear in a frat house, not a race for US Senate," Clare Kelly, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, said in a statement reported in the Boston Globe. "Scott Brown's comments send a terrible message that even accomplished women who are held in the highest esteem can be laughingly dismissed based on their looks."
Both sides could claim to have been joking, but the question remains: could a female politician be taken seriously with pictures floating around like this?
Did Mr. Brown's comments about his opponent's looks cross the line?
Erin Anderssen