The American Spectator

It’s not as if I don’t appreciate Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s entrepreneurial spirit—the emails flogging $20 seat cushions, whereby any seat can become “The People’s Seat,” and T-shirts do not constitutionally offend me—but today’s e-peddle is a bit of a head-shaker.

It begins harmlessly enough:

Friend,

Aw, really? Thanks!

I wanted to follow up with you about a competition we are having to win two Red Sox tickets to a game at Fenway Park in Boston with me. Simply write a blog post about Independence Day, and what it means to you, and the best post about this important American holiday will win two tickets to a Red Sox game from the 2010 schedule. 

Nice, patriotic constituent outreach, no? Brown will even pick you up in his famous truck for the game! It’s the all-inclusive proletarian package! And then:

For your post to qualify, please contribute $50 on this page and publish your blog post on the Brown Brigade by June 30th.

Fifty bucks? For the privilege of a public servant hosting a blog post on the throwing off of tyranny? Lord that’s pricey! (My bad, this totally is not Coolidge-esque thrift.) I picture schoolchildren—the proper target demographic for this sort of contest, am I wrong?—vigorously shaking disemboweled piggy banks, coming up $47.50 short, fathers standing in doorways saying, “This is the Great Recession son, you’ll have to make due with your commemorative seat cushion…”, tears. Anyway… 

This is an important holiday for our family to appreciate the freedoms and liberties that we have. I want to hear your ideas on why this holiday is so important to us as Americans.

Seems to me if he really wanted a broad spectrum of ideas on the holiday, he’d make sharing them a little cheaper. Still, I’ll mull over an approach to set myself apart, one that really helps Senator Brown see freedom and liberty in a new light, but with my credit card out and my thinking cap on I’ve already got the perfect title: Freedom isn’t free. It’s, like, fifty bucks. 

(Post title.)