Scott Brown won't do an It Gets Better video because, the Senator's spokesman has basically said, he feels bullied by Dan Savage, who has made "vile and sexually crude" comments about the former Cosmo nude centerfold.  


Hmm.

I'm not a fan of Brown, or for that matter much of a fan of Savage (by whom I have had the distinct honor of being personally savaged for comments on his Slog).  The sexual frankness on which Savage built his fame and infamy is by now old hat, and it comes with a boatload of personal obsessions of the type that have a habit of becoming pretty tedious with time (apologies to other life-long lapsed Catholics out there, but seriously).  

Whatever else Savage may be, I think you could definitely call him, well... a bully.  In some ways a mirror image of those he opposes, Savage has no qualms about diving into the slime-pit of popular "discourse," and while his super-seriousness sometimes stretches credulity to the outer limits considering he's a syndicated sex-advice columnist, the targets of his ire are generally so contemptuous that we can enjoy his take-downs regardless. 

The fact that he bullies bullies just makes him a bully's bully.  Kind of like Dexter is a killer's killer.  I mean, you could say Savage is sort of a gay Dexter, the Showtime serial killer who seeks out prey who richly deserve retribution, which Dexter metes out without mercy. The brilliance of Dexter is that it gets us to sympathize entirely with a serial killer.  Because deep down inside there's a little serial killer in us all.  Same with that little deep down bitchy queen. 

Savage's much celebrated campaign to savage Rick Santorum by literally sullying his name is by now the frothy stuff of legend.  And Santorum, who like so many right-wing politicians has built a career smearing gays, deserves to be denounced (even if he is essentially already dead in the water, with very little hope at this point of winning any nomination for public office). 

But whether the google-bombing of Santorum changed anyone's mind about the Senator or "Teh Gays" (as Savage is fond of saying in a nod to typo-prone anti-gay ignoramuses), or simply further entrenched those in either camp might be a question worth asking. 

Savage has certainly brought attention to the issue of LGBT bullying and suicide, but the genius of the It Gets Better campaign is that he's let other people do the talking this time.  Which is saying a lot for someone not known for restraint.

But Savage inarguably belongs to the swollen id of the age of the shrunken superego.  (There's a good measure of ego in there, too — "I am not the IGB project," Savage has written. "[A]nd no one who participates is required to crawl into bed with me.")

So when a spokesman for Senator Scott Brown, the only member of the Massachusetts delegation to refuse to do an It Gets Better spot, says that Savage has a "long history of lewd, violent and anti-Christian rhetoric," he's not wrong.  Savage's "anti-Christian rhetoric" can get as tedious as the cynical Christianism of politicians who feign offense at it. 

Which is what makes the brouhaha over Scott Brown's refusal to participate in the It Gets Better thing the kind of "win-win" typical of our stagnant political culture.  The rest of the Massachusetts delegation and the Governor (all Democrats, natch), and Savage himself get to look on with glee at a Republican Senator who has met their expectation of intransigence.  And Brown can likewise point to the crass comments of Savage and score easy points with his base as well.  See: win-win. 

In fact, for Brown to do an IGB video at this point would be a political loss for him.  He would appear to have caved to pressure — you could even call it bullying if you were so inclined — from his political foes.  So all we've ended up with in this instance is a retrenchment into a tired binary narrative that in the end reinforces the spiral of bullying and victimization — on both sides. 

It's the tired cliche of codependency that has become the hallmark of our political culture and the source of our national malaise.  We need our demons too much to give them up.  We've become a nation of obligate parasites. 

Yes, sometimes you need someone like Savage to shine a light on injustice, but when the spectacle of exposing it becomes sport it's probably time to step back.  If you can't show restraint in the face of injustice then you're not in it for justice.  And joking in a nationally-syndicated column about shoving a Scott Brown action-figure up someone's butt is not exactly the picture of restraint.

A less polarizing figure than Savage might have gotten better results with the likes of Scott Brown, but then a less polarizing figure probably would not have had such success with the IGB campaign, which was, after all, borne of righteous anger at the perceived indifference to an epidemic of LGBT suicides.

Still, before the campaign is swallowed whole by partisan politics in the run-up to national elections, it might be time to pause and remember: if you want bullying to stop, stop bullying. 

That way it gets better for everyone.