You Shore Got A Purdy Column

File uncomfortably between: "This one time, at band camp..." and "What happened in the green kitchen?"

From Think Progress via Crooks & Liars:

David Brooks Recounts GOP Senator Who "Had His Hand On My Inner Thigh" At Dinner Party

...
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.

Brooks said that he has “spoken to a lot of young women who are Senate staffers and they’ll have these middle age guys who are sort of in the middle of a mid-life crisis. Emotionally needy, they don’t know how to do it and sort of like these St. Bernards drooling everywhere.”
...

First comes the sparkly shock that "Wow, this guy really does have his hand up near my junk." Now, as every gentleman knows, protocol dictates that if the grabass is unwanted, you arch one eyebrow, say "Dude!" clearly and unambiguously, and move his nasty, earmark-fondling paw away from your bikini area. Usually that's enough.

But Bobo -- being an uptight, itchily-uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin power-groupie to begin with -- clearly didn't recognize a male-dominance power play when it literally crawled right up his leg. And so instead of asserting himself, in a moment of fight-or-flight/carnal-panic-versus-suckup-to-authority freakout, Bobo clenched up and tried to play the entire incident off by getting giggly, ignoring the hand between his legs and pretending it amounted to nothing.

What happens next is sadly predictable...

In the days or weeks to come the pure, primate alpha-male transgressive reality of what happened to him will start to sink in, and no matter how much hot water and Roger & Gallet Gentle Nature Lettuce Soap he uses, he won't be able to scrub away the dirty-dirty feeling that Senator Anonymous is

still...back...there.

From then on -- as the blowback from Bobo's unfortunate and powerful submissive-male reflex begins to burrow its way into his waking life -- this will haunt him. It will affect his work, haunt his dreams and skulk over his days like an ever-darkening cloud. It will grow from a distant whisper to an unbearable din until, hopefully, some wise therapist shoves a pair of dolls into his hands and insists that Bobo show him

"Where the bad Republican Senator touched you!"

Then, at last, the healing can begin.

3...2...1...


UPDATE: Welcome Open Left readers.