Bob Packwood's Harem Boy

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Then again, you could say he was issued that particular set of monogrammed blinders on the day he took his Senate seat in 1969. In many fields, eminence has a way of congealing the minds of its new inductees at whatever stage of social and emotional understanding they were at when they got the big nod. Many years ago, in her folk -- festive youth, an ex-wife of mine once turned down a pass from none other than Bob Dylan, or so she always claimed. Leslie remembered being startled that Dylan came on to her like the dorkiest high school greaser -- but why should that have surprised her? The life of a high school greaser would have provided him with his most recent information about communication between the sexes; ever since then, he'd been Bob Dylan.

Congress is filled with such human time capsules, walking around with perceptions frozen on the day they got sworn in. Ted Kennedy is the most famous example -- and when you think of the uncommon opportunities he's had over the years to familiarize himself with the revised parameters of public disapproval, you realize just how durable the obliviousness of eminence can be. The rubbish arrested in Packwood's noggin dates to roughly the same era; when he left private life, the acme of masculine success was still Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, validated by the Playboy philosophy and given a hefty boost in prestige from Teddy's late big brother Jack. For a socially gauche and not especially worldly Portland lawyer, the realization that his new title was a passport to being a swinger must have been heady brandy. As to why he never tired of it over the next 26 years -- well, politicians aren't real imaginative.

From The Village Voice (Sept. 19, 1995).

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