Barry Soper: American Ambassador to NZ rises above childhood abuse

There are two words, trailer trash, that Americans like to use when they look down their nose at someone.

Someone who comes from a broken home where their mum and dad divorce after just a year's marriage and where they each go on to marry and divorce another four times, leaving their kids in turmoil.

The kids are left with a string of drunken stepfathers with a lot of physical abuse where they're forced to come to the aid of their mother. They're shoved from pillar to post, 17 homes by the time they're in their teens, where their mother's struggling to cope on a welfare cheque.

The boy goes off shoplifting, stealing items ranging from a three piece suit to beef steaks and music albums.

Few would rise above a life like that but Scott Brown did and he's Donald Trump's choice as American ambassador to this country, getting the seal of approval from the American Senate a few weeks ago.

His lamentable tale of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks was detailed in an unconventional, tell all video he sent out to introduce himself to this country.

It's refreshing to see someone rising above such a disturbed background to become America's top diplomat in this country. This man, who was once voted by the Cosmopolitan magazine as America's sexiest man after posing nude as their centrefold, was briefly a senator and his appointment certainly breaks the mould of the previous big party donor ambassadors who're sent to this country as a reward for their generosity.

But then no conventional mould that could ever possibly be crafted to encase President Trump.

His nomination of Ambassador Brown caused quite a few ripples given that during his time as senator he, like Trump more recently, endorsed waterboarding, a torture that simulates drowning. But that form of torture seems to be from a past era, the United States appears to have moved on, despite The President's campaign positive view of it.

Even though the 57 year old Brown doesn't have any ties to this country he said a few years back that he always wanted to come here, which is a start.

So rather than dwell on his unfortunate views of torture, which as a diplomat he'll now regret, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyone who can rise above his sort of upbringing deserves, on that front at least, to be seen as something of an example.