Fedophilia, or David Brooks and the "buddy syndrome"

Something was nagging at me (other than the usual grump -- This is the best the Times can do for op/ed writers?) as I read David Brooks' "A Requiem for Reform". This was the passage that really gnawed:

Having skimmed decades of private-account proposals, Republicans did not appreciate how unfamiliar this idea [of privatization] would seem to many people. They didn't appreciate how beloved Social Security is, and how much they would have to show they love it, too, before voters would trust them to reform it.

Brooks' major criticism: The Republicans forgot to fake the love, to show the enormity of their "love" for Social Security, to prove they "love" Social Security just as much as the little guys. If all the mean daddy Republicans had just faked their concern with sufficient realism, the little folks would have entrusted them with their precious. And only then could the mean daddy Republicans have overwhelmed and destroyed it.

Wow.

What intrigues me is how Brooks' advice mirrors the so-called buddy syndrome found in pedophile cases. And if you've been watching Nancy Grace beating the Michael Jackson case, you know all about the buddy syndrome.

GRACE: Dr. Saunders, I`m not getting -- I have had a lot of child molestation prosecutions. But I never had many that actually used pornography to try to arouse children. What does that signify to you?

DR. PATRICIA SAUNDERS, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, it`s part of the classic profile of the pedophile. When I say classic profile I mean the clinical picture, that it`s part of the grooming. It`s a late stage in the grooming. The earlier grooming has to do with becoming a special buddy and making the child feel that he is special.

GRACE: I always call that the buddy syndrome, how a molester befriends the child and the child really doesn`t even understand that anything wrong is happening.

SAUNDERS: Exactly. . . . the molester may have convinced him that it`s out of love and that he`s just teaching him how to be a man.

So basically Brooks' complaint about the Republicans' clumsy seduction attempts is that Americans were not properly "groomed" first, that they failed to convince us we were all buddies, and that we saw the rape coming -- and ran the other way.