When former Rep. Bill Delahunt died last month, my first thought wasn’t his longtime public service that took him from the Quincy City Council to the Massachusetts House to seven terms in Congress, nor his closeness to the Kennedys, nor his acumen for international affairs. It was underwear.
That’s what happens when you are immortalized as one of the roommates in a slovenly congressional crash pad, a kind of real-life version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” — except times two and everyone is Oscar, not Felix.
For years, Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, shared a row house with its owner, former Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and two Senate Democrats who are now the top leaders in that chamber: Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois. As depicted epically in January 2007 by Mark Leibovich, then at The New York Times, Delahunt “is the least prominent of the four but perhaps the funniest. More to the point, he is the only one willing to sleep in the living room with a close-up view of Mr. Schumer slumbering a few feet away in his boxers.”
