ay goodnight, Jack. Spare yourself. Spare us.
Massachusetts politics has often featured a rich cast of characters. But who has tripped so repeatedly, so quickly as Jack E. Robinson III?
The latest embarrassment from Robinson involves a hit-and-run accident hours after he announced for US Senate Tuesday. He explained after unsuccessfully trying to get away that he didn't want to stop because he was driving a rental car.
Robinson had a great campaign going for a few hours last week. He boasted two Harvard degrees, a fortune that would allow him to invest $1 million of his own money in the race, and even, superficially, a civil rights legacy.
Running against Ted Kennedy for the US Senate means offering yourself up as a human political sacrifice. Everyone understands that. Just ask Joe Malone or Mitt Romney. But the idea is to lose with honor and set the stage for another day, not to make a spectacle of yourself.
It seemed that Robinson's campaign could only go up - or out - after his release Tuesday of ''The Robinson Report,'' a candid defense that ended up reading more like a detailed brief for the prosecution.
He basically admits to copyright infringement, then says he still believes he had the right to plunder another author's book on Pan American Airlines, and then says he believes the copyright law is wrong.
He goes on, ad nauseam, about the restraining order taken out by a former girlfriend, but brushes aside her allegations that he forced her to have sex with him. (In a single sentence, he denied both the alleged assault and his using profanity, as if they amounted to pretty much the same thing.)
All this one day after a woman he dated accused him of unwanted sexual advances, which amounted to attacking her with his tongue after repeatedly being asked to stop.
It's not that this Senate seat has always been synonymous with virtue. Before his current marriage, Kennedy had long faced allegations of naughty behavior. It would be news to lots of people that ''womanizing'' would be a barrier to running against him.
Then again, it's not clear that Kennedy has ever had a nickname bestowed on him as colorful as ''Jack the Tongue.''
If it seems odd that this is the best the Massachusetts Republican Party can do, maybe we're more surprised than we should be. Especially given the party's recent string of luck.
We have a governor cowering in fear of the Massachusetts Turnpike chairman. The lieutenant governor has been under siege for months. The Big Dig price tag keeps rising. The chairman of the Massachusetts Port Authority resigned in disgrace.
No wonder Robinson was welcomed with open arms. He was an entrepreneur who boasted that he got rich setting up a cell phone network in the Caribbean, and he was a name.
Robinson has already learned a cruel lesson about the fickle affections of the leadership of the Massachusetts Republican Party. Almost as quickly as they embraced Robinson last week, Governor Paul Cellucci, state GOP chairman Brian Cresta, and others urged him to drop out of the race, even indicating that they would be satisfied to allow Kennedy to keep his seat without opposition, if it comes to that.
Part of Robinson's pedigree is that he is the son of a former president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, which sounds good, except that the elder Robinson ran the nation's oldest chapter into the ground and was removed by national officials. In 1995, the state decertified the elder Robinson's construction company, the source of the family fortune, after concluding that it was little more than a front for white companies to score contracts set aside for minority-owned businesses.
Lots of business acumen in that family, but not always a lot of common sense.
It's another sorry episode - the most recent of many - in the continuing effort of people of color to get any kind of serious toehold in politics in this area. Robinson almost certainly wasn't going to win, but who's been done any good by this?
A week ago, Jack E. Robinson III was being compared to Ed Brooke; now he's being compared to Greg Hyatt. Stick to the cell phones in the Caribbean, Jack. And take cabs.
Adrian Walker can be reached by e-mail at walker@globe.com.
