A kinder, gentler Barney Frank

“Thanks for visiting my web page,” he says in a video, “the nice thing about the web is, it’s interactive. So if there’s any of these issues where you’d like to respond, or even have me respond to your response, please feel free to do so,” he says sincerely.

This from the man whose idea of “interactive” was to ask one of his constituents, “you said you’re worried about the deficit. Then you said you want to talk about the war. Who do you think paid for the war, Santa Claus?”…

Now in political danger, Barney Frank is a new man. Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan noticed the change when she recently asked Frank some questions.

“I was bracing to get hammered by his reply,” Eagan wrote, “This time, though, he didn’t tell me I was asking something dumb. He didn’t get mad. He didn’t lecture me on what I should be asking instead.”