A tale of love, loneliness, and David Brooks's inner thigh

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Okay, so David Brooks -- you know, the big-shot NYT columnist -- was on MSNBC with Norah O'Donnell and John Harwood earlier today. They were talking about "the dignity code" in Washington, which in a column earlier in the week Brooks wrote has been "completely obliterated," and, among other things, he said this:

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.

Yeah... what the fuck, right?

Harwood was taken aback and O'Donnell asked who it was. To which Brooks replied:

I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you. But so, a lot of them spend so much time needing people's love and yet they are shooting upwards their whole life, they're not that great in normal human relationships. And so, they're like freaks, they don't know how to, they're lonely. They reach out.

Apparently, they reach out for David Brooks's inner thigh.

Brooks went on to bring up "sloppy women who are licking their aides" -- women in Congress, that is, but he couldn't think of any examples.

His remarks were so bizarre that O'Donnell asked if he'd had "a couple drinks at lunch." "No,: replied, Brooks, he was just "trying not to be too dignified and stuffy."

Okay, but he just revealed publicly that a Republican senator... what? Made a pass at him? Tried to get fresh with him? Hit on him? Near-molested him?

One suspects that this senator doesn't much care for homosexuals and is moralistically anti-gay -- Republicans are like that, after all. And yet he still, uh, warmed up to Brooks. Or was he just being... friendly?

I don't know many men (straight or gay, but certainly not the former) who get friendly by becoming acquainted with another man's inner thigh. Actually, such, uh, familiarity is hardly accepted at all in polite society.

Brooks apparently found the experience uncomforable, and who wouldn't? But imagine a man doing this to a woman. What is harrassment and what isn't? Being a freak, or being lonely, is hardly an acceptable excuse.

Watch the exchange below. It's not something you hear every day. It makes you wonder not just about what's going on up on Capitol Hill but about what's bouncing around in David Brooks's head. (He didn't make it up, did he? No, surely not. But, then, is this sort of thing common?)