As promised: Sherrod Brown appreciation/HuffPo losers depreciation picspam
There [were] many funny moments (Brown was criticized for his unruly curls and his cheap suits), and DeWine's negative ads (led by Republican strategist Karl Rove) prompted Brown's team, in Hillary Clinton's words, to deck him with an ad of its own.
“About quarter till 12 on election night, it’s gonna be Bill O’Reilly sitting there with Sean Hannity,” he said, drawing another cascade of jeers from the crowd at the mention of another popular conservative Fox host.
“No, no wait a sec, this is gonna be too much fun. You’re not gonna be booing ‘cause you know what’s coming next. So Hannity - they’re going through all these numbers and Barack’s won California, New York and Illinois and Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and all these others. And, you know McCain wins Utah or something,” Brown said, drawing appreciative laughs and claps from the energized crowd.
“Then Hannity’s sitting there next to O’Reilly, and they’re looking at each other, and O’Reilly says, ‘You gonna do it?’ And Hannity says, ‘No.’ So O’Reilly - sweat’s coming, tears are coming down his cheeks - you can see ‘em on your flat screen. And O’Reilly says, ‘Well, Ohio went for Barack Obama. He’s gonna be president of the United States!”
The proceedings remained open for five painstaking hours as Senate leaders awaited the climactic return of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who flew in from Ohio and cast the decisive 60th aye vote. [...] Brown, whose 88-year-old mother died of leukemia last week, had dashed from her memorial viewing in Ohio last night and boarded a government aircraft provided by the White House that landed at Andrews Air Force Base. The journey illustrated the extraordinary steps Democrats took to guarantee a major victory.
For Brown, the moment turned on the memory of his mother, who was raised in a small Georgia town during the Great Depression. A champion of social and racial justice, Emily Campbell Brown read and reread Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and insisted that her boys address African American adults not by their first names but with "Mr." or "Mrs."
She cast her first vote in 1944 for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and even as she lay dying she wanted to live long enough to see Barack Obama in the White House. And so it was a poignant moment last night for the son who knew that his vote would make a difference.
"I know she would want him to be there for the vote," said Brown's wife, Connie Schultz. "There was just no question that Sherrod would have to cast his vote."
(GETTY IMAGES CAN SHOVE THEIR WATERMARKS UP THEIR COLLECTIVE ASS.)
On his lapel, he wears not an American flag, but a pin of a yellow bird in a cage. On a Thursday morning in October, as we leave his office to walk to the Capitol for a committee meeting, Brown hands me a bookmark-sized slip of paper that explains: “The canary represents the struggle for economic and social justice.” It recounts how miners once took canaries into the mines so that when the birds died, they knew the air was too toxic to breathe. “Miners were forced to provide for their own protection. No mine safety laws. No trade unions able to help. No real support from their government. … It has been a 100-year battle between the privileged and the rest of us.”
In conclusion...
We all know who the cutest man in the Senate is, no matter what lesser folks might say.