On Thursday evening, author Christina Baker Kline published the story of her encounter with Bush for Slate, saying she was invited to Houston in 2014 as a guest at the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy fundraiser. She sat down to lunch with the family privately before the larger event, and then they all lined up for a group photo. Kline and her husband were getting ready for their picture, when Bush motioned her closer:
He cocked his head at me for a moment, then said, “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re a writer.”
“Yes.”
“You wanna know my favorite book?” he whispered. I had to lean close to hear him.
“Yes, what is it?”
By now the photographer was readying the shot. My husband stood on one side of the wheelchair, and I stood on the other. President Bush put his arm around me, low on my back. His comic timing was impeccable. “David Cop-a-feel,” he said, and squeezed my butt, hard, just as the photographer snapped the photo. Instinctively, I swiped his hand away.
That is in line with the statement a spokesperson for Bush gave Deadspin—that he likes to say the “David Cop-a-feel” punchline to “put people at ease” before photographs. He also allegedly said the same thing to Grolnick after asking her if she could guess his favorite magician. The spokesperson directed Slate to that same statement.
Kline says she told her husband what had happened in the car to the event, and was overheard by the driver, a friend of the Bush family who had offered to give them a lift:
Our driver, who was stopped at a light, sat there for a moment, then leaned back and looked at us. “I do trust you will be … discreet,” she said.
Her comment wasn’t menacing. But in that moment I thought: She has heard this before. The people around President Bush are accustomed to doing damage control.There must be many of us, I remember thinking. And now I know there are.
Read the full piece here.
