"Mommy! He hit me!"

A quarter-century ago, while a student at Tufts, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown posed for a centerfold in Cosmopolitan Magazine to help pay the rent. At Tuesday's candidates' debate, his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, was asked about this (presumably because there's nothing more important to talk about in Massachusetts), and responded, "I didn't take my clothes off" to pay for school.

I guess that's good to know, but we'd have been more impressed if her response had been along the lines of, "Really? That's what you want to talk about?" But I digress.

Yesterday morning, appearing on a radio show, Senator Brown was asked if he had a response. He did: "Thank God!"

Those of you who grew up with a little sister know what happened next:

"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. “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."

Get it? It's serious political discourse to sneer at the fact that your opponent was buff enough to get paid for a cheesecake photo back when we were all young, but if he flicks your nose in response he's a brute, and should be sent to his room.

We're waiting for some intrepid reporter for the Boston Globe to ask Ms. Warren if, back in the day, she looked.