Ed Markey finds a new way to be forgotten

For Sen. Ed “Mr. Frosty” Markey, these last 10 days have been the best of times, they have been the worst of times.

Hooking up (politically speaking, of course) with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the septuagenarian solon from Chevy Chase has assured himself of minimal primary challenges in 2020.

By chaining himself to the Kim Kardashian of his party, Mr. Frosty has likely avoided the fate of Mike Capuano – killed off in the woke Democrat primary last year solely because he was, like Markey, a male heterosexual Roman Catholic ethnic native of Massachusetts.

Thanks for the lifeline, Sandy.

On the downside, The Man That Time Forgot suddenly finds himself a political punch line yet again, after being connected to AOC’s absurd Green New Deal proposals to ban, among other things, cow flatulence, air travel and 99 percent of the nation’s energy supply.

The usual apologists are offering the usual alibis for Mr. Frosty, claiming that he is too “seasoned” a legislator to have signed on to such idiocy.

Really? I would argue that idiocy has long been Mr. Frosty’s calling card. He is a hack’s hack, an empty suit’s empty suit.

Billy Bulger’s old quote about Markey can never be repeated enough: “To a battle of wits, he comes unarmed.”

At another St. Patrick’s Day time, in Everett, Markey lamely joked about the low esteem in which he has always found himself.

The recurring question: Why do I get no respect, why do I never feel the love from my fellow payroll Charlies? Why, Markey finally asked, do all of you hate me?

“Because,” replied House Speaker George Keverian, “you’re an (bodily orifice), Eddie.”

His first exposure on network TV came in 1979. Ted Kennedy was filmed on a phone call with the pride of Malden Catholic, whispering to his aide, “What’s his first name? What’s his first name?”

Forgettable then, forgettable now.

Mr. Frosty spent 35 years in Washington scheming to get into the Senate. Finally, in 2013, he made it. His first vote, in a Senate committee on a resolution to authorize military action against Syria?

“Present,” he said, trembling.

Let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane. A couple of years ago, after a Patriots’ Super Bowl challenge, Mr. Frosty took to the Senate floor to lionize “the Boston Patriots.”

After a disaster at an amusement park, he denounced “the roller-coaster arms race.”

In 2014, he took a stern approach to the scourge of “high magazine clips,” whatever they might be, as well as the proliferation on city streets of bazookas and anti-tank devices among “the teenagers that are terrorizing the citizens of this country right now on every neighborhood corner.”

His old hometown of Malden has changed more than somewhat in the almost half-century since he decamped, but thus far there have been no reports of senseless street crimes involving bazookas.

Another courageous proposal: Markey demanded that caffeine content be listed on every can of Red Bull. Every single one!

In 2015, he attended a Senate hearing on global warming which was quickly hijacked by a couple of “denialist” witnesses. Reading a prepared statement, he denounced one of them, and she responded, “Have you read my testimony? Have you read my testimony?”

Markey went slack-jawed. He started stammering about the winter of ’15 in Boston– the coldest, snowiest on record, 110 inches of global warming.

Spittle began forming on his lips. You’ve heard of flop sweat, this was flop spittle.

“The warming of the ocean,” Mr. Frosty sputtered, “intensifies the amount of precipitation when Arctic air hits that water.”

In other words, he was saying, the warmer it gets, the colder it gets. The witnesses were laughing in his face.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman! No trick questions from the witnesses!

He was first elected to Congress in 1976, in a special election after the death of the incumbent. Against six other candidates, he cruised to the nomination with 22 percent of the primary vote – Landslide Eddie.

Eight years later, he tried running for the US Senate. He sat down for an interview with Andy Hiller, then of Ch. 4. Remember 1984 – the Reagan administration was trying to prevent Communist takeovers in Central America. Danny Ortega was the toast of the town in every People’s Republic in Massachusetts. He could have defeated Mr. Frosty in the Democrat primary.

Andy Hiller asked Markey, which side is the US supporting in Nicaragua?

Can somebody say, Deer in the headlights? Which side are we on in El Salvador? Ditto. Who’s the prime minister of Israel? Uh, duh, umm….

His longtime girlfriend from Malden tried to defend him. His campaign was cratering. Then the gal pal found out he had a new squeeze down in DC. She allegedly assaulted him in a car outside the Oak Grove MBTA station in Malden.

He dropped out of the Senate fight. He had no choice. He couldn’t afford to lose his House seat – that would have meant he’d have to go back to driving the ice-cream truck in Malden Square.

Now he is a grandee of the Beltway, living in a mansion in the lily-white Chevy Chase neighborhood of Rolling Hills. One of his neighbors is Comrade Chris Matthews of MSNBC.

I think the last time I saw him in his “home state” was at the old Videolink studios in Watertown – that’s how far back it goes. I walked in for a cable-TV live shot and there he was, Mr. Frosty. I did a double take.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” I told him. “I must be – because I’m in Massachusetts, and in front of me I see… Ed Markey.”

I haven’t had any similar acid flashbacks since then. How ‘bout we keep it that way, Mr. Frosty?