David Brooks Recounts GOP Senator Who "Had His Hand On My Inner Thigh" At Dinner Party
By Logan Murphy Saturday Jul 11, 2009 5:45am
Think Progress has more:
Earlier this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how “the dignity code” has been “completely obliterated” in Washington, DC. Discussing the concept on MSNBC today, Brooks recalled how he “sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time”:
BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.
This is one of those bizarre moments that pop up on your teevee, and the fact that it's being delivered by a true wanker like David Brooks takes it up a few notches on the creepy scale. I understand a pundit's disdain for some of the people they cover, but Brooks really shows some underlying hostility issues here. Perhaps a little TMI, David...
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And we should be schocked?
yikes.
Late Blight
If you're on the East Coast where the weather's been cool and damp, and growing potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, or peppers go prevent "late blight" immediately. The spores are carried in the air, Big Box garden centers are a potential source of infection, and you can lose a garden in 3-5 days once the fungus takes hold. (It's the same stuff that caused the Irish Potato Famine.)
everything's early it seems... s.central illinois, here...
we had an august heat wave last month... back to "normal" now, but even the hydrangea's are turning; they should just be blooming...
i gave up the veggie garden... flowers flowers flowers!
some basil for pesto, but that's it... i can't take the heat...
Last week we had a cold front
Got down to 99.
(Lasted one day though).
in Plano.
We're down to 101 in Lubbock today. I'm chilly.
I eat chili for lunch.
afternoon posts.
I think it has something to do with emminent arrival of Alberto Gonzales in our fine city. TTU hired him. Geez....
Lubbock is HOT (mad).
I heard about that.
So, what does he teach, boy's gym?
Believe it or not, some sort of "law" subject. Makes ya gag doesn't it? My brother graduated from TTU Law School and he says this almost invalidates his degree. His Republican office mates, also TTU grads are pissed. Alumni have commented on the local newspaper site they will not longer be donating. We're pissed. He will not be getting a warm welcome here.
Hope I run into him in the grocery store. I'll pull a Bobby Knight on his ass.
he invades hospital wards coercing the bedridden to sign quasi legal documents doing the bidding of evil though plausibly deniable perps.
I read he was teaching a political science course to undergraduates as a Visiting Professor.
I imagine the most popular answer on the final is going to be "I cannot recall."
THE WHOLE TIME!
and then "ehh, get me out of here."
uh huh...
He bloody liked it. I would have backhanded the perv.
Notice the smile on Brooks' face as he told his tale. Lol.
..he just didnt want to get up. Or maybe it was up, and standing would have been embarrassing?
So many questions are better left unanswered...
if you sit through an entire dinner with an unwanted hand sexually groping you without either firmly guiding the hand away or calmly telling the hand's owner to remove it i'd say that you've got bigger problems than the senator david. however inappropriately, at least the senator's able to express himself, you can't.
stand up and move beause of the bulge in his pants, he was so excited.
... he should have pushed his hand away or said something. But apparently he liked it, but then he should tell him, not us.
Exactly. I have had this experience and first you whisper to the person to stop it and if that doesn't work either move or say something out loud so that it gets everyones attention. If you let it continue, you are in on what's going on just as much as the person doing it. I went the whisper route and it worked.
My stomach feels all yucky now just thinking about Brooks doing this. Why the hell would he want to share this unless he thinks it makes him sound attractive to other men?
Bulls eye!!!
We have someone sitting in the US Senate who is attracted to David Brooks.
Mark Foley or Larry Craig?
not a Senator.
.
Lindsay Graham? Orrin Hatch?
I don't care if it's President Obama, or the Pope himself, if a man puts his hand on my thigh, he is told, politely at first; not to do that, not now not ever... then in increasingly unmistakable terms that the behavior is not acceptable. Female politicians OTOH are more than welcome! (Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi are exempt)
didn't need an anti wrinkle cream while the senator had his hand on his thigh.
Its cruel to not share.
On a serious note, notice his words "mid life crisis... people who are extremely lonely"
Its a fatal mistake to live purely for work, makes for a lonely boring end.
'live to work, not work to live'
..or any other kind of foreplay?
I wonder what kind of salad cream the dinner was serving?
But for dessert was seedless grapes.
OH Shazbot!!!
Love it hello.
Genius.
"I was like, ehh, get me out of here.... and to the nearest bathhouse, quick!"
Is he bragging or complaining?
Bragging. Loud and proud!
"I was like, ehh, get me out of here." So then we left and went back to his C Street room and had a fantastic night of passion together.
or are you just excited to see me?
You either enjoyed it, or would have knocked the shit out of that guy...or been too embarrassed to share such a story.
..in my opinion.
I would've calmly explained that I wasn't into that kind of thing, gently removed his hand, patted it for the compliment and then continued to enjoy the evening without any issues of conscience whatsoever.
It's just that sometimes the passive approach can be misunderstood as "maybe next time". If I did something stupid like that to a woman I should expect and deserve a rap in the mouth.
.
My sympathy lies with David Brooks here. Yes, he's a wanker extraordinaire, but that doesn't mean I think it's ok to grope him. So a really guy would have fought the dude off? That's not that far away from saying that if a woman doesn't fight hard enough, she wasn't assaulted. He secretly enjoyed it? What's wrong with you peeps.
Groping isn't the issue.
Brooks let this guy's hand rest on his inner thigh.
He didn't pull away or ask the guy to remove his hand.
He let it stay there throughout the dinner.
I consider this to be Brooks outing himself on national TV.
..not that there's anything wrong with that, of course..
And being as how Brooks is in favor of same sex marriage, breaking with party line to announce it, it also means that he is not being hypocritical in coming out.
BUT...
claiming he didn't enjoy it when he let the Senator leave his hand on his crotch for the entire dinner IS hypocritical.
But that is to be expected from a right wing douche like Brooks, if a republican isn't a hypocrite in one way or another just what the hell are they doing being a republican?
Wondering how many of you know what it's like to get unwelcomed attention or touches. Every woman knows what it's like to try to move away from a hand that keeps on coming back and to be in a situation where a public reprimand isn't that realistic. Now, I wouldn't have let something like this go on throughout a dinner, but that's me. I'm not into blaming people who don't figure out a way to extricate themselves. That seems too damn close to blaming victims. No, I'm not saying Brooks was a victim, or anything close, but I'm disturbed by the attitudes I see expressed on this site. How can you conclude on the basis of Brooks' passive response that he liked it or that he must be gay. Think about the assumptions you're making here, and how sexist and homophobic they are.
Wanna try me?
this may not be the web site for you.
Sincerely,
The easily amused
I wasn't that good a student
So I'd be more like
Bemused.
Keep up the good work. ;-)
Does the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination
Call condoms
GLAAD Bags?
Thanks "Jerry"
Of course the "adult" way to handle a situation like this would be to politely but firmly rebuff the sexual advance unless of course you are Gay and feel okay about the situation or you are still in the closet like Bobo and can't decide whether you like it or not.
Sat, 07/11/2009 - 07:37 — lilybelle
Leviticus 24:13-23 Deuteronomy 22:21-24, Deuteronomy 20:10.
Is Brooks married?
I ask because I read this about him a Wiki
"Brooks also broke with many in the conservative movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of same-sex marriage in his New York Times column. He equated the idea with traditional conservative values: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage." (New York Times, November 22, 2003, A-15.)"
I'm not a gay man so I don't know, but I would think a gay man would not want another man holding his thigh unless there was a mutual attraction.
I am a gay man, and I assure you he would only have touched me once.......if he had tried it again, I would have dumped his plate of food in his lap, got up and walked out, and let the rest of them who were in attendance figure out what happened. just my 2cents.:)
I'm not a gay man, I'm a straight woman, but I'm with you. You want a scene? Touch me one more time and you will have one.
If I liked the guy groping me, I'd enjoy the meal (if I could even focus on food). If not, that's what dinner forks are for.
The amusing part of this little anecdote is that Brooks let this fellow's hand rest on his inner thigh throughout the entire dinner.
Two hours later, he claims not to have enjoyed the experience.
Please.
So Brooks just sat there and LET the Senator keep his hand down there? Doesn't that say something pretty damning about Brooks' ability to stand up for himself?
Was he drunk, blubbering, and did he look like he had been triple-dipping the orange bronzer?
Oh, Boehner is in the House.
Never mind.
This shows how much reach politicians have into the press. So to speak. I wonder how valuable this contact was to Brooks?
..if a self-confessed toady is going to drop anecdotes like this.
We can take it.
that would explain "the whole time”...
the things a "journalist" will put up with!
What do we have?
1. GOP senator
2. Emotional freak
3. Probably drinks
4. Is so hard up, David Brooks looks like a hunk.
OK, I've got it narrowed down to 40
Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
OK, down to 36
This so reminds me of Tucker Bowtie and his smear-the-queer in the public bathroom braggadaccio. I don't believe that Carlson has ever beaten anyone up, nor that anyone would find Brooks the slightest bit alluring.
So what is Brooks really doing here? Is he setting up a straw man for damage control? Where everyone's a perv on the Hill, and people should recalibrate their outrage-ometers? Is he trying to change the topic to get away from the Ensign/Sanford/Craig/Vitter et al. circle jerk?p>
Or is he really just so frickin wierd and narcissistic that he doesn't sense how creepy he and his story come off?
Brooks really just outed himself as a media whore.
Today's so-called journalists trade in access to the powerful. That is why the Bush administration got away with so many outright crimes not being reported in the MSM - few "journalists" were willing to jeopardize their access by committing actual journalism. Nobody wants to be the next Helen Thomas.
Brooks let a Senator grope him without complaint for two hours because he didn't want to risk his access.
You've got to admit, a hand on the inner thigh is a lot more appealing than your lips on his ass for two hours which is the usual position for these sycophants.
More like media prude.
Think of the scoops Brooks may have gotten if he had let the guy get to "third base"
Just reading the words I have to agree with Brooks
But this is setting aside the anecdote.
But it's the words he wrote, "'The dignity code (has been) “completely obliterated” in Washington, DC.'"
Yet repugs are so fearful that's what Senator Franken will cause to happen.
dignity?
You mean Brooks just sat there all night with some Con's hand on his inner thigh? I don't know about the rest of you but if someone is making me uncomfortable (especially physically), I make them stop doing whatever it is that's making me uncomfortable. A man's hand on my thigh for even a second? Yeah, that would end pretty quick. The question is, why didn't Brooks make him stop?
Maybe it was his own hand
Waiting for the "happy ending" of course.
And biting the feeding hand?
No way!
figured it worked for Jimmy Jeff Guckert-Gannon...
He Is Kinda Cute
The odds are the groper didn't have his hand on Brooks thigh the entire two hours, hard to eat that way.
Mayhaps, perchance, they had a shortage of napkins
And a dinner of fried chicken.
The senator lived in the C-street house(church) in DC.
If you don't get the connection, you haven't been watching Rachael.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/r...
Is that in the C-section of Washington?
Now that I think of it
boosh was a C-student
And that was WITH
The help of
The class nerds taking his exams.
.... Cheney's secret masturbatorium.
http://writingcompany.blogs.com/this_isnt_wri...
I posted that link once and it got deleted.
Too scary man...
Bet Cheney photo-shopped it himself
I love how the republicans have no regard for their "bitches". Really, female, republican bitches that marry into the psycho-minds of the diluted are built in Stepford, California.
Even the womens movement for these "bitches" say "it's the bitches fault"....pass the Stepford sauce.....republican bitches love their man doing inner thigh activity with other men....it's a Stepford thing. Go ahead, punch a female republican, it's ok...Degrade them too, they have no self-esteem. They are hillarious....And ugly....(inside: empty head, worn out off between the legs)....and they don't know nothin'. The republican "Stepfords" are kinda like those inflatable "punching clowns" we had when we were kids. You can't offend something so "Stepford Stupid", just keep beating them. They'll behave.....Like Mark Sanfords "Stepford"...gotta laugh.
Winston Smith
But even Winston Smith had a girlfriend who worked in the government pornography department
Writing it.
This post is filled with hatred of women. It's up there with a white person thinking s/he can use the n-word in anything but an offensive way. Something to think about the next time you want to call a woman a bitch and think you're a progressive. So STFU about Republican women being ugly and worn out between the legs. you just straight up don't like women, dude.
Well a post is rather a Freudian phallic symbol.
The women's would be the gate
But not St Peter's
Unless he expects "special favors"
To gainsay entry.
but most Stepford wives are bitches.
dog that's a bitch, and she's not at all like a Stepford Wife.
...the event Brooks describes, or the fact that he apparently let it happen.
On the other hand, creepiest of all may be that he felt the need to tell us.
That's one story I never needed to hear.
Scarred for life.
Circumcision did that for me.
I've been fascinated by this trend Brooks refers to, which has really expanded over the last 10 years or so. It's the full body embraces that politicians give each other. I've seen Obama and Biden embrace this way and then continue holding each other while they exchange some comments almost nose to nose.
And they always kiss the women politicians, which I'd resent if I was Hillary or Condi or whoever.
I've always thought - who does that with people that aren't relatives and loved ones?
It always creeps me out.
The GOP is the party of toe tappers and inner thigh slappers.
but I think "inner thigh grappers" would be more descriptive.
Brooks doesn't strike me as the kind who likes it rough.
the Senator or why Brooks won't reveal his identity.
left thigh or right?
What with all the Edmund Burke talk! Any Republican senator is going to take that as a pass. It's pretty much the same thing as inter-stall Morse Code.
I rather like Edmund Burke
But I always get him mixed up with Edmund Blake
The first actor to play Dracula on stage
Unless you count the actor who read the part in Bram Stoker's readers theatre version for copyright purposes.
I found it. The first actor to play Dracula was T. Arthur Jones, in the Lyceum Theatre, on May 26, 1897, where Bram Stoker was Sir Henry Irving's business manager, in a five hour adaption, that Stoker adapted from his own book for copyright purposes.
OH SHAZBOT!!!
stroking Burkean Balls of Burkean Belles.
Isn't there an illegal wrestling hold where your grab the inside of the opponent's thigh to disable him?
nutcracker ?
Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity would do.
Seriously, WTF... how was that story even apropos, never mind appropriate. What was the point of Mr. Brooks? May be that was his epiphany that he is gay.
It is the XXI century, nobody should give a f*ck about sexual orientations or preferences, it is not like there are more pressing things at hand to discuss, right Mr. Brooks?
WTF.... just WTF!
2. Possibly titular
the pressing thing at hand was the hand.
Maybe it's a little different than he said it happen. Perhaps Brooks had his inner thigh in this senator's hand, not the other way around.
Also there's no indication of how many sheets to the wind the ol Senator was. Many start drinking before noon. Perhaps he mistook Brooks for an attractive female option.
Brooks needs to quit bragging about it, unless he's ready to spill.
That's a side of him he keeps out of the limelight.
Mr. Hand.
which made the whole thing even more bizarre.
If he is straight, then he is a whore for letting the "senator" rub him.
If he is gay, then good for him. But I have no clue why should we care about that episode.
In any case, if he is not going to name names, then he is just a run of the mill tease. Maybe he wants the senator to "call him." Bunch of degenerates...
Maybe Brooks liked it; maybe he didn't want to make a scene and embarrass the guy; but I don't really care.
Sounds to me like the advance was not asked for, so somebody get Mr. Brooks drunk and spill the beans on who the guy was!
I think better of Brooks, having seen that. He showed his sense of humor and a detached perspective on his own party that most of his blinkered fellow pundits lack - or certainly that they'd never share with the public.
I still say he could have got some good dirt if only Mr. Goody-Goody had put out a little bit.
Got to take one for the team once in a while.
David Brooks at bat?
I'm lazy and don't feel like reading all the comments above.
Has anyone already made a joke about Brooks being a whore? Like, "I was uncomfortable about his hand on my thigh because he hadn't paid me yet," or, the senator put his hand on Brooks' thigh because he mistook Brooks for a whore and, really, who can tell the difference?, or, well, you get the idea.
That Larry Craig is such a friendly rascal with his feet and hands.
Google "bohemian grove"! Odds are this unknown senator will be there!
the bigger quesion is why did Brooks allow it to remain on his "inner thigh" the entire night? I don't know a single straight man who would have allowed that for 2 seconds, and even then they would have freaked out.
I want to gently, politely, but insistently put in a word for an uncomfortable side issue here.
I am a straight man. When I was younger, I was slim and young-looking even for my age. I had some exceedingly uncomfortable problems with men several times in those years -- the kind of uncomfortable problems that today's progressive gay male community would like to claim never used to happen with young straight males. It has taken me several decades to move myself away emotionally from the scepticism and defensiveness that those experiences left me with.
I'd like to propose to gay men in this thread, that you have your own issue with this story: That issue is denial.
You need to face this little piece of nastiness and help your straight brothers take care of it. You can start by NOT making fun of David Brooks when he says he was uncomfortable. You can denounce this episode. You can apologize to Mr. Brooks, explain to the rest of us that gay men do not gratuitously molest straight men, and then "out" that Senator. Really out him; so other gay men who are so inclined, will think three or ten or a hundred times, before they abuse their gratuitous sense of familiarity with straight men they are attracted to.
I hope to Hell you all get my point here.
sc
Well, I have never done such a thing. How can I be responsible for what some other men did to you?
Straight men do the same thing to girls, and I don't hold you responsible for that.
Those people are called perverts, gay or straight.
(In fact, it's good you mentioned it. It saddens me to think you've born a grudge against gay men because of an incident, or incidents, with a/some pervert/s. It's not like we're a club that promotes or condones such behaviour.)
That's bigoted
You're saying only gay men are slim and young looking?
David Brooks and his groping Senator dinner date both must have a "wide stance"...
and I've never groped or made unwanted advances to anyone.
I realize a percentage of straight guys have an experience of having an unwanted sexual advance from another man.
Most of those guys I've talked to don't seem to be able to translate that into having empathy for women who get unwanted advances...It's unfortunate, but the worst homophobes I know have had such an advance, and I suspect couldn't deal with the their own feelings, both negative and having some sexual attraction to something taboo.
And for me the weird part is not about Brooks' sexuality, but that the power relationships in DC cause a 'journalist' to endure this perhaps unwanted familiarity from a powerful politician. Brooks' seems to feel he was not in a position to object.
Perhaps he feared loss of 'access'.
Reason Brooks put up with it is probably because this is a tight job economy, senators are extremely influential people who can get someone fired, and Brooks didn't want to lose his job.
Creepy or not, if the Senator had pulled this on a woman, most would have called it sexual harassment by undue influence, and sympathized with the woman instead of expressing such hostility.
This ol' women's libber will have to side with Brooks on this issue.
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