New York Times columnist David Brooks and powerful Democratic Senator Robert Menendez both thoroughly embarrassed themselves over the weekend. Brooks subsequently took the ethical approach and admitted that he had behaved badly. Menendez took the opposite approach, and topped his previous unethical response to a scandal with a response that was even worse.
Brooks had complained via Twitter that his $78 airport dinner highlighted the everyday struggles American families face amid ongoing inflation. omitting the fact that most of his charge was for whiskey. The tweet drew widespread mockery and this Ethics Alarms rebuke. Brooks didn’t hold back in his condemnation of his own actions, and said on PBS, “The problem with the tweet — which I wrote so stupidly — was that it made it seem like I was oblivious to something that is blindingly obvious: that an upper-middle-class journalist having a bourbon at an airport is a lot different than a family living paycheck to paycheck. I was insensitive. I screwed up. I should not have written that tweet. I probably should not write any tweets … I made a mistake. It was stupid.”
Got it. It was stupid. Now explain your columns over the last few years…
In sharp contrast, Menendez, who has been suspected of corruption for a long time, barely escaped an earlier indictment via a hung jury and now faces another indictment for bribery after “over $480,000 in cash and gold bars — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the [Menendez] home.” As discussed in this Ethics Alarms post, Menendez blamed anti-Hispanic bigotry for the charges. But he topped that with this explanation for why almost a half million dollars, some of it in gold bullion, was found in his home.
“I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, what I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said during a press conference today. “Now this may seem old-fashioned but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived,” he added.
I guess his lawyers are going to try that one this time around and hope for another hung jury. Old -fashioned—yeah, I remember how my Greek immigrant grandparents used to have gold bars scattered around the house.
Ethics Alarms 
I wanted to comment on Brooks, and didn’t have time, but I have some related experience. I, too, went threw Newark not long ago, and I was appalled by prices. The alcohol, yes, was very expensive, so I had to eschew, even though my flight was delayed by several hours, and I had already had a very long day. But the food was pretty pricy, and that special burger meal for $17 is only a deal for people used to paying high quality restaurant prices, not fast food prices, for a meal.
But, my parents went through Denver International recently to visit us, and just getting a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit with hash browns and coffee each was a $20 order. A smoothie each and a light dinner (they flew in from Casper, WY, so the layover in DIA was monstrous), and they dropped over $70 in food at the airport. That was for two people. When my wife and our four girls fly back to Wyoming in October, we’re packing food in. The airport prices are insane.
Regarding Menendez, it wasn’t gold, but my wife’s paternal grandmother squirreled away cash all over her house, mainly so her husband couldn’t spend it. I think my father-in-law is still finding little caches here and there over a decade after his parents passed away. That isn’t gold bars, but it makes Menendez’ excuse almost sound plausible.
Uh, Robert, you might need to rewrite your wiki page:
“Menendez was born on January 1, 1954, in New York City to Cuban immigrants who had left Cuba a few months earlier, in 1953. His father, Mario Menéndez, was a carpenter, and his mother, Evangelina, was a seamstress. The family subsequently moved to New Jersey, where he grew up in an apartment in Union City.”
Castro didn’t overthrow Batista and take control until 1959. You my friend, are an embarrassment to Cuban refugees.
My mother and father used to keep cash in a little cardboard box on the shelf in their bedroom closet. This was the ‘fifties and cash was necessary. I doubt they ever had more than forty bucks in there. My dad only took home about a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week then. Of course, that was when a hundred and twenty-five bucks was actually worth something.
Great catch, OB!
Funny, huh? I knew there was something fishy about his age and the fact he’d been born in the U.S. and not in Cuba. I grew up among Cuban refugees who had really lost everything and then built new lives for themselves in the U.S. An impressive people.
Isn’t Menendez outing his own party’s confiscatory policies? Ironic, ¿no?
jvb