Harrumph!
Massachusetts representative Barney Frank doesn’t suffer fools, tolerate tardiness, or think much will result from all those gay rights rallies. But when it comes to the prospect of the next four years, the grumpiest guy in the House is downright giddy.
By Benoit Denizet-Lewis
From The Advocate January 13, 2009
Harrumph!
It’s 8 a.m. on Election Day, and Barney Frank is doing his laundry. “Good morning,” he mumbles, lugging a gigantic white laundry bag over his shoulder as he leads the way from the basement up the stairs to his studio apartment in an unremarkable brick complex in Newton, Mass. We’re greeted there by Frank’s boyfriend, Jim Ready, a handsome and sturdy 39-year-old who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sarah Palin’s snowmobiling husband, Todd. Ready loves to surf more than snowmobile, and he’s secured promises from Frank, who does not surf, to accompany him on some beach excursions. “I’ve been to enough political events with him lately,” Ready says. “He owes me.”
Today, though, the 68-year-old congressman is busy trying to keep his job. There is little doubt that he will -- Frank is beloved in the district he’s served since 1981 and is running against Earl Sholley, an all-but-ignored Republican -- but Frank’s brand has taken a hit in recent months as Republicans “mounted a coordinated campaign to blame Democrats, with me as the point man, for the economic meltdown,” he says. In a poll taken a few weeks before the election, Frank was drawing only 55%. “I’m usually in the high 70s,” he tells me, “so that was a problem.”
Frank fought back the only way he knows how -- vigorously, and with a heavy dose of comedy. He produced two memorable campaign commercials: In the first he uses vintage footage of circus elephants as a backdrop for criticizing Republicans who “did the bidding of the financial giants that wanted no regulation.” The second ad opens with an unhinged Bill O’Reilly screaming at Frank during an October edition of The O’Reilly Factor. “The right wing is losing control,” the narrator says. Frank ends the commercial with his trademark wit. “I’m Barney Frank -- I approve this message and the chance to be on TV without interruption.”
In Washington, Frank used his position as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee to lash out at Republicans who blamed him for the subprime mortgage crisis. In an October hearing about the future of financial services regulation, Frank, looking particularly disheveled (wrinkled shirt collar, hair sticking up on the back of his head), gnawed on his gavel as Republican congressman Scott Garrett suggested that Democrats were not being intellectually honest and had blocked Republican amendments aimed at reining in Fannie May and Freddie Mac.
“The gentleman’s three minutes have expired,” a feisty Frank said. “And let’s talk about intellectual honesty…. He said earlier he’d offered amendment after amendment. In his head. But on the floor he offered one, which was withdrawn…. These amendments he talked about, in which he sort of implied that the Democrats had blocked the Republican efforts, are fantasies.”
Frank is much less ornery today. In fact, the man whom many call the grumpiest member of Congress has been uncharacteristically cheery over the prospect of his reelection, a Barack Obama presidency, and a healthy majority in Congress. When I joined Frank and Ready for dinner two days earlier at the Cheesecake Factory in Newton, Frank spent much of the meal smiling and fawning over Ready. The two became a couple three years ago when Ready pursued Frank at a gay political fund-raiser in Maine, where Ready still lives. “I’ve had a crush on Barney for 20 years,” he told me, rubbing Frank’s back.
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http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid67124.asp
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