Democrat New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker made headlines recently after he embarrassed himself during Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings by releasing “confidential” documents already cleared for release and for implying Kavanaugh was racist when the documents actually proved the opposite.
Booker attempted to portray himself as the “bad boy” who takes risks, challenges authorities and breaks the rules, but in the end, the whole thing just came across as a pathetic ploy to garner attention. And it’s not the first such incident — in a recently resurfaced column Booker wrote years ago, he openly admitted to an act of sexual misconduct while attempting to virtue signal his newfound views on women and relationships.
Booker’s admission initially came to light in 2013 when he was still the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and was a candidate for the Senate seat he now occupies.
A grope without consent
Booker published a column titled “So much for stealing second” in The Stanford Daily in Feb. 1992, which recounted an experience he’d had on New Year’s Eve in 1984 when he was only 15-years-old.
“Telling one’s own personal story is often the most powerful way to make a point, or, more importantly, to make people think,” wrote Booker. “When grandiose statements entrenched in politically correct terminology are made, many may listen but few will hear. When I hesitated in writing this column, I realized I was basking in hypocrisy. So instead I chose to write and risk.”
Booker set the scene: New Year’s Eve ’84, attempting to hug a female “friend” as the ball dropped and being greeted with an unexpected kiss from her instead, followed by his attempt to reach “second base,” if not make it around to “home” for a “score.”
“As we fumbled upon the bed, I remember debating my next ‘move’ as if it were a chess game,” Booker wrote. “I slowly reached for her breast. After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my ‘mark.’ Our groping ended soon and while no ‘relationship’ ensued, a friendship did.”
“You see, the next week in school she told me that she was drunk that night and didn’t really know what she was doing,” he continued.
Virtue signaling pioneer
The remainder of the column dwelt on his prior view of sex as a game or competition — one made easier with alcohol — and how his views toward women had shifted substantially in college by virtue of his real-life experiences and conversations, so much so that another female friend had teased that he’d turned into a “man-hater.”
In the end, it was readily apparent that Booker’s column was intended as a means for him to prove his progressive liberal bona fides, by casting himself as a former “bad boy” who’d once taken advantage of a drunk woman but had now come to understand how wrong his actions — and by extension, the actions of all other men — truly were.
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This was virtue signaling to the left before virtue signaling was even really “a thing.”
Ultimately, Booker’s column comes across as just as pathetic and attention-seeking as his shenanigans during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.