I always believed no two people could ever do more damage to the abysmal reputation of the Massachusetts state Senate than Billy and Whitey Bulger did.
But that was before the gay lovebirds of Beacon Hill – Sen. Stanley Rosenberg and his Pee Wee Herman-lookalike little friend Byron Hefner.
Rosenberg is resigning as of 5 p.m. today – the first time his snout will have been out of the public trough since Jimmy Carter was president, although of course now the pension kicks in, because he wasn’t expelled, he resigned, due to ill health.
Everybody was sick of Stan.
It was reported yesterday that the superannuated sugar daddy is angry that his fellow statesmen “turned their backs” on him. I disagree – nobody who read that report about the sordid behavior of the newlyweds would ever turn their backs on either Rosenberg or Hefner. At least not if they’re guys.
Rosenberg’s fellow hacks in the Senate waited until the day after the filing deadline for the September primary to release the explosive document, so obviously they thought he was running for yet another term, a safe enough assumption, given his lifetime in the hackerama.
But the report is so squalid, so tawdry that even Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw must be embarrassed for their fellow liberal.
Rosenberg is now 68, and Pee Wee – I mean Bryon, is 30. Young enough, in other words, to be the solon’s grandson. Yet by his own (repeated) admission in the report, the infatuated sugar daddy and his staff knew that the boy toy was “a mentally ill person who regularly abused alcohol, and their general understanding was that they could not control his behavior.”
And yet he did nothing about it. In fact, Rosenberg got the lieutenant governor, Karyn Polito, to preside over their, ahem, wedding, in June 2016.
(I called Karyn yesterday and asked her for a comment about how she now felt about marrying the lovebirds, and also whether her dear friend and neighbor from Shrewsbury, Leigha Genduso, had served as the boys’ maid of honor and caught the bouquet from Byron. Karyn did not return my call.)
Pee Wee was also in the habit of making racist comments “from time and time,” including slurring a person of color on Stan’s staff. Judging from his texts, he was also close to functionally illiterate – he types “amendable” for “amenable,” and predicts Tall Deval will be “reflected,” as opposed to “reelected.” Of course, maybe Hefner was just drunk, which he usually was.
The happy couple also liked to exchange X-rated texts, or as the report modestly calls them, “graphic, sexualized text messages.”
Like on Nov. 19, 2015, when Hefner tells his geriatric boyfriend to “fire everyone and replace them with republicans,” and Rosenberg texts back, “Not everyone. U r still lusting after (redacted).”
On May 28, 2016, Byron texted the Senate president: “I want to roofie (a Senator) and make a sex tape.”
All Whitey wanted to do was murder people at the State House who crossed the Senate president. Oh sure, Whitey liked ‘em young (or so Stevie Flemmi testified) but he had no interest in roofie-ing any senators of either sex. At least as far as we know.
Despite his advanced age, Rosenberg often took the cyber initiative, as in March 2016 when he “initiated sexualized text messages with Hefner about the spouse of another elected official.”
Nothing says “I love you” like sending your betrothed photos of a naked male stranger. Just ask Sen. Rosenberg, “because ‘a few times’ he accidentally opened a picture of a naked man from Hefner in a meeting and had to quickly hide his phone so other people would not see picture.”
Say what you will about Whitey Bulger, but he never, ever texted X-rated gay porn shots to his brother, the Senate president.
Then there was the time in 2014 – I guess you could say they were “engaged” then – when the betrothed went to another politician’s Christmas party.
“At one point in the evening Sen. Rosenberg saw Hefner show his iPhone to the host and observed the host have a negative reaction. As he was leaving the residence the host whispered in Sen. Rosenberg’s ear that he had ‘to get rid’ of Hefner.”
But they were in love, don’t you know! All Pee Wee had done was show the other politician – another senator, apparently — a photo of a naked man. It was his own personal evolving paradigm, to coin a phrase.
“Sen. Rosenberg was aware: (1) that Hefner routinely expressed in graphic terms sexual interest in members of the Senate and Senate staff; (2) that Hefner downloaded and texted images of nude men and male gentilia; (3) that Hefner inappropriately displaced such images to another Senator….”
They’re not too happy in Happy Valley this morning. Sen. Sugar Daddy has struck out. Fortunately, CBS News has an opening. So does NBC. Move over Charlie and Tom, here comes Stan the Man Rosenberg.