I wonder if David Brent ever rubbed a black man’s head for luck.
Spontaneous shoulder rub then. Still wholly inappropriate.
How do we know it was spontaneous? Bush may have spent the whole day repeating to himself, over and over:
“Soon, I’ll get to rub the shoulders of that gal who served me some pig!”
I remember getting in some trouble once for touching a girl in a too-familiar way, considering that we didn’t know each other very well.
But I was in college at the time. I still shouldn’t have done it, but I was young and stupid.
Bush is sixty years old. He’s been President of the United States for five and a half years. Before that, he’d been Governor of Texas for six years. Before that, the owner of a major-league baseball team, and a participant in his father’s political campaigns.
By now, even if he’d been raised in a barn (which he wasn’t), he should know a little something about protocol. And even if he didn’t, the White House has full-time people whose job is to brief the President about the protocol of public events he’s about to be part of.
My theory is, he doesn’t care anymore. His last “accountability moment” is behind him, and he realizes he’s blown his chance to advance his agenda in big new ways in his second term. It’s all downhill from here, no high cards left to play, so he’s given up the charade of pretending to be a grownup, and he’s just letting his true self shine through.
It’s not a big issue - the most prominent report was in the Bild tabloid which called it a ‘love attack’ (in Bild usage this has sexual undertones - they often use rather babyish language catering to the semisentient part of their readership). Otherwise the tendency is not to get outraged on behalf of someone who is not making an issue of it herself (it was much the same when the British Sun published a photograph of Merkel changing out of her bathing suit with her bottom showing in April - Bild ran a story, the rest of the country ignored it when Merkel downplayed it). Anyway Merkel is regarded as a kindred spirit of Bush’s picture of 2003 carnival float (possible not work safe in USA)
I know I’m incredibly ignorant, but what are her politics like? People keep mentioning that she’s rather chummy with Bush - do they have similar agendas? (How’d she get elected, anyway, given German sentiment towards Bush?)
Let’s recap here for a moment: On the way to his chair. Bush paused behind the chancellor of Germany and placed both his hands on her shoulders. He then appeared to perform a squeezing, rubbing motion with his hands upon her shoulders while she grew visibly uncomfortable. He then removed his hands and moved on to his seat.
You say you aren’t defending him. I accept that. You also say you don’t think what he did should be mischaracterized. I accept that too.
However, you have objected to using words to describe what he did, including “groping” and “backrub”. What term exactly do you propose to use to describe his actions? ‘Caress’? ‘Cuddle’? ‘Fondle’? ‘Pet’? All of these terms fit the definition by strict dictionary standards. Also, if he were to have continued his action for a full minute, I don’t think anyone would object to calling it a “backrub”.
It sounds to me like you’re herding the conversation to use some term like “non-sexual affectionate touch” or some similarly sanitized term. IMO, this would be a worse mischaracterization than “Backrub”. Let’s call it what it is, no matter how much it puts all our collective teeth on edge.
She had a “WTF?” expression like she’d just been groped from behind while standing in a subway car.
AFAIK, we don’t have a term for that action, but you’ll note that I have not objected to it being called a “massage”. That’s the closest term we have although even that is a bit misleading since most “massages” last longer than 2 seconds and they serve n entirely different purpose. If I were to make up a new term for this common action, I’d call it a shoulder press or something like that. It’s not meant to last more than a few seconds-- you squeeze the shoulders once or twice and move on.
“Groping” and “backrub” both have strong sexual overtones that I think serve more to confuse than to clarify what happened.
I’d suggest a “shoulder squeeze”. It’s not really a sexual term, but it does denote affection.
I would disagree that it’s an act that didn’t have sexual overtones. I’m not arguing that Dubya gets off on rubbing the shoulders of middle-aged German women, like I do. But sexual behavior is traditionally used in displays of dominance. For instance, when one dog mounts another, with no intention of copulating. Sames goes with a lot of hazing in fraternities, judging from the news reports I’ve seen. It’s been pointed out that this is similar to other sorts of behaviors that express dominance over another person - and all of them seem to have some bit of sexuality to them. So while he might not have been thinking about her hot, boney Teutonic shoulders, the fact that it is a maneuver commonly used among people who have a sexual relationship is not entirely a coincidence.
Only because she’s a woman. Had he done this to Blair would you say it had sexual overtones? If Bush had done the European kiss-kiss cheeck-cheeck thing with her, would that have had sexual overtones?
The “shoulder squeeze” action is not something you do to your girlfriend. Watch the video again-- there isn’t anything tender or soft about what he did. The sexual overtones are in your head, I’m afraid.
You know there is something strange going on in the political leadership of America. First you have Eisenhower who boinks his secretary. Then you have Kennedy who takes sloppy seconds after his brother with Marilyn. Johnson and Nixon? Well they didn’t have a chance really did they. Then you have Carter who committed adultery in his heart followed by Reagan who must have done something inappropriate during his years in Hollywood, The sin capital of America.
Bush I ? Do you really think he managed to stay faithful to Barbara? He seems to have had a lot of excuses to travel abroad. Then Clinton of course, getting his dick slurped off by a young lady while wrapping his lips on a cunt dipped cigar. Now we have George Bush. The best he can do is a 1 second shoulder massage on a crone?
By the same token, it doesn’t really remotely resemble a massage.
Possibly because of my aforementioned sexual fetish.
See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You guys have sanitized his actions into being a “Shoulder Squeeze”. The scenario now reads “Bush walked around the table, paused briefly to squeeze the chancellor’s shoulders, then moved on.” Pretty soon I predict you’re going to be saying “What’s the big deal? It was just a shoulder squeeze?”
It wasn’t a shoulder squeeze. It was an undesired touch which clearly caused Merkel to be creeped out. The only difference between this action and a sexual one was the expression on Bush’s face.
Since we obviously all agree it was a creepy and inappropriate action, it should be called a name which clearly denotes it as creepy and inappropriate. Anything less is a mischaracterization. I’m going with “shoulder grope”.
Merkel got elected (barely - her CDU/CSU group polled 1 % more than the SPD, the party of her predecessor Gerhard Schröder) mainly on an economic/fiscal/employment platform. The Schröder (red/green) government got into a fiscal hole by making unaffordable tax cuts at the beginning of the decade and also badly mismanaging labour market reforms (which managed to raise the overall benefits to the unemployed while at the same time giving the impression of giving them a raw deal. No mean feat.). Foreign policy remained the only bright spot - people are thankful to Gerhard Schröder for keeping us out of culpability for Iraq but that was already a thing of the past in 2005.
Merkel seemed to share the US expectation in early 2003 of Iraq becoming a nice, thankful, US-aligned nation and spoke out for the Bush position then (She got silent on the topic afterwards). Substantive German foreign policy has been the same under the Merkel government as under the Schröder one (yes to troops to Afghanistan, yes to campaign against terrorism, no to war against Iraq) but it seems to have been in Bush’s and Merkels common interest to emphasize a more cordial relationship. Merkel’s interest seems to get more influence on US policy, and for Bush the change of government was a chance to turn off the hostility without having to admit fault.
Look back among my posts (and John’s) and you’ll see we’ve both called him an ass.
I don’t consider “shoulder squeeze” to be a sanitation. Like I said; it’s not sexual, but it is affectionate. Sort of the physical equivalent of saying “You’re alright, mate”. Fine for old friends in a relaxed setting, but really, really not between the leaders of two countries at a press conference at diplomatic meeting.
Like I said, we all agree it was creepy and inappropriate. I still think “Shoulder Squeeze” is sanitizing.
Imagine two separate people who have not seen the video. Person A is told that Bush gave Merkel a shoulder squeeze that she was unprepared for and responded in an unwelcome fashion. Person B is told Bush paused to give Merkel a brief shoulder grope which appeared to creep her out. Which person has a more accurate impression of the event that occurred? I go with B.
I did think about “affectionate shoulder squeeze”, but that implies that the gesture was welcome (which it clearly wasn’t). Hmm. Why don’t we use both, and that way it’s assumed the most accurate impression is somewhere in between?
“Creepy and inappropriate shoulder squeeze” works for me.