The Story Behind the Viral “Don’t Touch Me” Video

In case you haven’t seen it, yet:

After watching that, I had to know the back-story. As someone who also cringes when touched by strangers, I was in total sympathy with that reporter. So I googled up “Marc Slavin Laguna Honda” and found the back-story at Asylum:

The Backstory
Dan Noyes was doing an investigative report on San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital. According to his reporting, the hospital administrators had been using the patient gift fund for extravagances like gourmet meals, barbecues and airline tickets for themselves and staff.

Dan went to Honda Laguna Hospital to confront the administration about the report. Noyes tells Asylum that “in 25 years as an investigative reporter, this is pretty much the strangest reaction I’ve ever had from a public official.”

He notes the viral popularity of the clip, and says that commenters on his blog counted the number of times Slavin touched him, versus the number of times Noyes warned him to stop. “I think the final count was 41 for the pats, and 18 for the times where I said ‘Don’t touch me,’ so it was very odd.”

So, was Slavin ever in danger of having the Noyes brung on him? “Well, as a reporter, and as a professional, you have to act a certain way. Of course, as a guy, I wanted to push him, but I wasn’t going to do that because it really wasn’t personal, it was business to me. It was definitely frustrating, because I told him not to touch me, he kept on doing it, and that’s just wrong.”

Read the rest at Asylum. It’s good stuff, including the links to Noyes’ previous work pwning Gavin Newsom’s former sock puppeteer press secretary.

Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines

UPDATE:

What? No longer on YouTube? No Prob, Hot Air has the Liveleak video.

And thanks for the link, Allahpundit.

UPDATE II:

Okay, I found another YouTube video. We’ll see how long it stays up.