The Tale of Two Headlines: Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren

The last two days have seen two interesting headlines in the already quite warm 2012 U.S. Senate race here in Massachusetts. Let’s start with today’s New York Times editorial page, which this morning basically anointed Elizabeth Warren its new patron saint:

Ms. Warren talks about the nation’s growing income inequality in a way that channels the force of the Occupy Wall Street movement but makes it palatable and understandable to a far wider swath of voters. She is provocative and assertive in her critique of corporate power and the well-paid lobbyists who protect it in Washington, and eloquent in her defense of an eroding middle class.

Just for good measure, the editorial, titled, “Elizabeth Warren’s appeal,” added, “She is a remarkably eloquent and appealing Senate candidate.” Right now, the link is one of the lead items on the Times homepage — not exactly bad PR for a Monday morning.

Now contrast that to the treatment Scott Brown got in the Herald yesterday. In an article called “Brown’s Blips Adding Up,” reporter Dave Wedge made note of the string of gaffes our junior senator has been making lately. Those include top adviser Eric Fehrnstrom getting caught with a fake Alan Khazei Twitter feed, Brown joking about the relative merits of seeing Elizabeth Warren naked, and his website plagiarizing from an Elizabeth Dole speech (you decide which is worse: plagiarizing or plagiarizing from Elizabeth Dole). And this story was in the Herald — the paper so unabashedly in love with Scott Brown that they practically deliver copies of it to newsstands every morning wrapped in barn jackets.

The ever-charming Brown was once thought to be nearly invincible, but it’s no wonder that the polls are now running tight. There’s a long way to go, of course, but it’s not going to get any less interesting.