Wolcott: Roving Hands (Merkel incident)

Most of the commentary I've seen regarding President Bush's impromptu shoulder-rub/aborted massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 summit has treated the incident as a light, wacky divertissement, much like Bush's goofball attempt to make a dramatic exit from a press conf in China only to be thwarted by a locked door. Certainly there's something intrinsically comic about a freelance prowling masseur looking for flesh to knead. Just last night I saw an episode from the Lifetime sitcom about a dating agency headed by the sensational Jane Lynch where one of the matchmakers was giving unauthorized foot rubs to clients, defending his behavior by claiming, "I can't keep track of all ten fingers." His hands see an opportunity, and they take it.

Bush's behavior crosses more boundaries, and not just because the Leader of the Free World doesn't normally lay his playful hands on the opposite sex in his high-powered public forums. Put simply, what Bush did is a very odd way for a married man to behave under most circumstances, even odder under these. I'm sure Lance Mannion, TBogg, and medal-honored veterans of matrimony will back me up on this: a husband's reaching down to massage a woman's shoulders is not standard operating procedure. Quite the opposite. It's an invitation to trouble and lengthy interrogation--from questions that begin, "What were you doing?" and proceed, Pembleton-style, from there. Now there are exceptions, of course, longtime female friends to whom one can give a platonic squeeze without major seismic repercussions, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. Given that some of our racier tabloids have been hinting in screaming headlines that there's trouble in the Bush marriage, this was not the most felicitous time for him to get grabby.

(snip)

…But Bush has always been a taker, not a giver. He wasn't giving Merkel a massage, he was taking possession of her, letting everybody know, "This little lady's mine." I wonder what Merkel's husband thought of Bush's handy familiarity. I can't imagine Laura Bush was too thrilled.

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http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/07/roving_hands.php

I have worked in business too many decades not to recognize his literal power grab. It was meant to humiliate and subjugate Merkel; her reaction showed that she knew just what he was doing. I learned how to control that kind of shit by developing a "startled" reaction that landed my elbow wherever it could hit. "Oh I'm sorry, you gave me such a start!" etc.

Man, just when I think I can't dislike that creep any more strongly, he gives me yet another reason.

I love Wolcott, thanks for posting.

and an embarrassment to this country. Any reasonably sane person would have realized that by now. His current followers must be the super wealthy, who don't give a damn how much America is humiliated, or the religiously insane, who will lap up whatever drool he manages to secrete.

Too bad.

But it really should have been Prodi with "Roman Hands...."

I had a principal (I'm a teacher) who tried the back rub thing on my back in the 70s when I was in my 20s. It feels really horrible. It is sexual harassment pure and simple. It was horrific in the 70s, but it is unthinkable in the 2000s. I'm ashamed at what Bush did, and appalled. We should impeach just for being a national disgrace.

impromtu massage, or Putin, or Berlesconi. Tony the Poodle, maybe.

and the adults in the room are too polite to punch his lights out.