RIP Edward Brooke, First Black Senator Since Reconstruction, First Black Dude Barbara Walters Boned

Edward Brooke, the first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction, has died. He was a Republican like they used to make 'em: urged Nixon to resign, supported public housing and school busing (in Massachusetts!) and the ERA, sexed up Barbara Walters. You know: the good old days![contextly_sidebar id="KN01QNjHvh3YcWgSkI6fxx9ivWOnsK8x"]

Unfortunately, despite being such a total Socialist, what with being for taxes for mass transit and poor people, Brooke is not remembered today for destroying the Republic but for his sex affair with Walters, at least by us.

Was Brooke married? He was married! Barbara Walters wrote about their humping in her memoir anyway, even though Brooke was at the time still alive, and even though she then went on to excoriate other people (John F. Kennedy mistress Mimi Alford) for writing books that "hurt" other people, by talking about boning.

Here, have some blockquotes from the blind pigs at Newsbusters! 

Perhaps Walters thought she was more discreet, like her words about her affair with Brooke on page 259: "I missed him terribly at first. he had been so much a part of my life and my fantasies."

But then, in discussing her affair with married caterer Claude Phillippe on page 99, she wrote: "Phillippe, older and more experienced than the men I had known, was a great lover, tender and passionate. I grew up sexually." But she didn't write that to sell a lot of books, apparently, unlike her guest:

WALTERS: Ms. Alford, I have to bring something up. Because as I said, you’re going to sell a lot of books. There’s a lot of juicy details and after 50 years you remember all of them. But there are two things that trouble me. One, did you think at all of Caroline Kennedy, who’s alive today, and her children when you wrote this book, which did not have to be written?

Sexcellent point, Newsbusters!

Anyway, a resounding Wonkette farewell to Edward Brooke, Massachusetts senator and the last sane Republican, because he left office in the 1970s, when the John Birch Society was something that went unmentioned in polite discourse and definitely wasn't the group in charge of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.

[ ABC ]