Ironically, some of us would have empathized with Biden if we'd been allowed to hear this at the time.

It's the coverup that really hurts.

The scandal is MUCH worse than the Biden WH not releasing the tape. The so-called “independent” Merrick Garland crooked Justice Dept was SUBPOENAED by Congress to release it, he defied that subpoena after jailing Steve Bannon for defying one, then DOJ refused to jail Garland. https://t.co/TLzzdrosZf

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 16, 2025

"In the weeks since his rowdy State of the Union speech... President Biden has shown a looser, more comfortable version of himself..."

"... cranking out memorable wisecracks, heartfelt moments and cringe-worthy gaffes in equal measure. He has needled his Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, with increasing frequency, presented his softer side on talk radio and repeatedly spun tall tales about driving an 18-wheeler truck, being arrested at a civil rights rally and having an uncle who might have been eaten by cannibals. In one memorable episode this week, Mr. Biden read aloud his teleprompter instructions, asking a crowd to imagine what he could do with 'four more years … pause.' The annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night could be another opportunity for Mr. Biden to be in the moment, in what might be the perfect setting for him to continue roasting Mr. Trump.... And on Friday, Mr. Biden made a surprise visit to 'The Howard Stern Show'... showing an emotionally vulnerable side to Mr. Stern’s large audience of middle-class Americans...."

Writes Chris Cameron, in the NYT.

It's a puff piece. What can you say? I'll just say I wouldn't have written "continue roasting Mr. Trump" so close to "eaten by cannibals."

Also: If you'd asked me what kind of people listen to Howard Stern, I wouldn't have thought of saying middle-class Americans. From yesterday's NYT article about Biden's Howard Stern interview: "Mr. Stern’s listeners are mostly white, mostly male and mostly comfortably middle class, according to figures shared by the Howard Stern Radio Network...." "Middle class" looked odd to me, perhaps mostly because it floated free of those other 2 characteristics: white and male. 

Biden has been calling out "Don't jump!" for a long time.

On April 3rd, responding an RNC Research tweet — "In Philadelphia, Biden stops and randomly yells: 'Don't jump!'" — I blogged "It's not random. It's his sense of humor. Interestingly sadistic."

This morning, I saw email from a reader telling me that Biden had called out "Don't jump!" again — this time, in Ireland.

Searching for this new event, I ran across this:

Biden calls out "Don't jump!" all the time! Well, at least it's not evidence of dementia, which is what his antagonists love to point at. It's more just an old man's idea of how to be funny — ridiculous repetitiveness. He'll say it every damned time. Here, I go again!

It will be hard for the WaPo "fact checker" to give 4 Pinocchios to Joe Biden. He has to back off one Pinocchio because... well, why exactly?

Here's Biden repeatedly asserting that "he's traveled 17,000 miles with Xi Jingping": 

 

Biden is making a lot of misstatements of fact. The WaPo fact checker, Glenn Kessler, writes:

During his recent town hall on CNN, President Biden made a number of mistaken claims and assertions. He suggested racehorse owners receive tax breaks worth $9 billion, almost enough to pay for free attendance at community college — a claim that left tax experts scratching their heads. He said that the $7.25 minimum wage set in 2009 would be worth $20 if indexed for inflation, a statement that only makes sense if you are measuring from 1968. He wrongly stated that “vast majority” of undocumented immigrants were not Hispanic.

No Pinocchios assigned for any of that. It's all so obviously wrong that maybe it's not worth bothering to investigate. But Kessler's approach in these columns is, I think, to isolate one thing and figure out where it stands on the continuum from utter truth to bald-faced lie. Here, he's chosen the 17,000 with Xi Jingping assertion. 

The first time Kessler heard it, he says, it "seemed like a typical Biden malaprop." See? Biden gets graded on a curve. Unlike Trump, whose misstatements were judged against a stereotype that he's a huge liar, Biden gets the benefit of a presumption that he's always getting words wrong — as though it's some sort of disability, like his stuttering, and we ought to be charitable.

But Biden has repeated the assertion, as you see in the video clip, so the standard charitable allowance for the idiosyncrasies of the Biden brain was hard to use, and the fact checker has to fact-check at least some of the new President's statements. The feast on Trump is over, and the fact-checking enterprise must go on or at least seem to go on.

Here's Kessler:

If this won't get you cancelled... well, it won't, so that shows you one more thing that's wrong with cancel culture.

This should be the end of it. But it won’t be. https://t.co/hl4N1i7bOf

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 11, 2020

"It is a shame that December 7th is remembered as a dark day when America was attacked, when it could be seen as a bright day in our history, the beginning of constitutional ratification."

I wrote on December 7, 2007 — the 220th anniversary of the day the first state ratified the Constitution — the first state, AKA "The First State," my state, Delaware. Maybe you don't know that Delaware is the first state, but if you grow up in Delaware — at least if, like me, you grew up in Delaware in the 1950s — you know that Delaware is The First State, and you know that December 7th is Delaware Day. When you get a little older, you find out that other Americans don't even mention Delaware on December 7th. They call it Pearl Harbor Day. Another event vastly overshadowed the little state's pride. We weren't even the smallest state, if smallness can be a point of distinction, only the second smallest. But we were first. First! No one outside of Delaware ever seemed to notice.

But Joe Biden is a person from Delaware. He wasn't born there. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1942, but his family moved to Delaware in 1953. Maybe I crossed paths with young Biden. Maybe he was seated at the next table at the Charcoal Pit. Clearly, he knows about Delaware Day, and wouldn't he have heard — every year of his life — the reminiscences about Pearl Harbor that overshadow Delaware Day? It's something that has affected me all my life, that caused me to write that line you see in this post title.

In the video below, we see Biden, bringing up Delaware Day as he lightly taunts the Governor of Pennsylvania over the fact that Delaware was once part of Pennsylvania: "But we declared our independence." Delaware separated from Pennsylvania at the point of the Declaration of Independence, in 1776. That's not the basis for Delaware Day, which marks the ratification of the Constitution on December 7, 1787. Biden not only mixes up the 2 important events in Delaware history — "We declared our independence on December the 7th" —  he forgets that December 7th is Pearl Harbor Day. He calls it D-Day:



The clip begins with Biden tracing the arc of the northern border of Delaware, which I can attest, is something people from Delaware believe is very interesting but really just shows how little there is to say about Delaware.

Anyway... what's up with Governor Tom Wolf? Did someone instruct him to abase himself by keeping the top of his bald head lower than Biden's effulgent smile?

"Just so we are clear on this, being black is an immutable characteristic — a physical attribute that is entrenched and innate."

"Blackness doesn’t change based on your income, musical tastes, choice of life partner, intellect or level of education. And it doesn’t fade or disappear based on how you vote. And yet we all know there is often an effort to police blackness … to determine who is really black, fully black, authentically black, conveniently black, naturally black, unapologetically black, conservatively black, asymmetrically black or blackity black. It’s a minefield of emotion, oppression, aspiration, judgment, backlash, pain, history and pride. Really complicated stuff. And so why would Joe Biden decide to step into this space like a deputized member of the soul patrol?"

So begins Michele L. Norris in "Joe Biden’s hill just got steeper. That’s a good thing" (WaPo). Norris is the founding director of The Race Card Project. Is Norris black? I looked at thumbnail photograph of her at the top of the article and it was not obvious, but if she's the director of The Race Card Project and she feels free to write "blackity black," I presume she is black.

Beginning a statement with "Just so we are clear on this" doesn't mean that what follows is true. It's not clear to me that "being black is an immutable characteristic — a physical attribute that is entrenched and innate." Whatever happened to the idea that race is socially constructed?

But what I hear Norris saying is that there's already a question of what part of what we call race is inborn and what is a social construct, and why does anyone think it's their calling to get into the details of what's what and what matters? Why does Joe Biden think he should talk about that?

Democratic candidates who have earned the backing and trust of top black party leaders too often tend to coast on their adjacent-to-blackness bona fides.... Biden’s flippant attempt at humor sounds like it was meant to underscore what’s at stake in the upcoming election, and it is indeed hard to overstate the prospect of another four years of Donald Trump’s bungling and callous leadership. But the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” line of thinking can be dangerous and cavalier. Black votes have to be earned both on the whole and through individual and targeted efforts.....

Interesting that Norris used the word "cavalier." Biden himself called his remark "cavalier" when he apologized for it. She also calls it "flippant." Notice the assumption that Biden was just feeling loose and blabby and splurted it out. I wonder. I think it was a joke somebody wrote for him, and he was looking for the place to insert it. That's why it was so awkward. It didn't fit the conversation that Charlamagne Tha God was trying to have, which was about Democrats expecting black people to vote for them without giving much of anything in return. Biden did not want to have that conversation, cut it off with a joke, and said he had to get going because his wife needed to use the phone.

"He could say the same thing about gay voters, women voters or voters with a pulse. If you vote for Trump, you ain't human."

The third-highest-rated comment at "Biden said black Trump voters ‘ain’t black.’ That’s a double standard/You don’t hear politicians saying that about any other group" a column by David Swerdlick at WaPo.

"You ain't human" is the broader statement, but it's less offensive because it doesn't treat black people as different from every other group.

The "You ain't human" idea is very close to Hillary Clinton's notorious "deplorables" remark.

"No one should have to vote for any party based on their race or religion or background."

"I know that the comments have come on like I was taking the African American vote for granted … but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never done that, and I’ve earned it every time I’ve run. I was making the point that I have never taken a vote for granted."

Said Joe Biden, apologizing for what he now calls his "cavalier" statement, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

I recommend watching the entire 19-minute interview that got Joe Biden in trouble, but I admit that I haven't watched beyond 6:33, because I got tired of listening to Joe Biden yelling, especially the part — I'll focus you right on it — where he says "Dead! Dead! Dead!":

Amy slips... and it seems she's revealing that she's Biden's VP choice.

{ WATCH }

A slip this morning by Sen. Amy Klobuchar during a campaign event for Joe Biden in Grand Rapids.

“I could not think of a better way to end my candidacy, as hard as it was to do with our beloved staff and everyone else, than to join the tick—“ pic.twitter.com/KZvzqNzkUJ

— Mikenzie Frost (@MikenzieFrost) March 7, 2020

So funny... and kind of charming. I hope she is Biden's choice. I think they'll be cute together. What better way than a gaffe to reveal your connection to the gaffe-master?

Via "Klobuchar 'ticket' slip-up at Biden event in Michigan sparks speculation she'll be his VP pick" (Fox News).

AND: Let's see how Joe is doing:

This is Joe Biden at his St. Louis rally earlier today. He spoke for less than 10 minutes, and these are just SOME of the verbal errors he made. This is NOT a stutter. This is serious. @progressvoice @KyleKulinski @OrganizingPower @CANCEL_SAM @shaunking #WhereIsJoe pic.twitter.com/5zsWddwqNi

— The Path Forward YT (@PathForwardYT) March 7, 2020

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd tells the perfect joke: "Biden picked her because her hair smelled like honey mustard."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the you know, you know the thing."

This is a direct quote from Joe Biden:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the you know, you know the thing."pic.twitter.com/A0MRpMmIWk

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) March 2, 2020

The original line (from the Declaration of Independence is: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...."

Where he got tripped up was in saying "by" after "created," as if he were in a hurry to get to God, and in the original line, God is called the "Creator," but it's glaringly inelegant to say "created by their Creator." He needed to say "created equal," and get that word "endowed" in there to put some distance between "created" and "Creator." Having lost the flow, he resorted to "the thing." So his enthusiasm about God, rushing toward God and skipping the big idea of equality, flung him into the gaffe of calling God "the thing."

"We'll see who's sleepy," says Joe Biden, and then he calls Chris Wallace "Chuck."

Just now, on "Fox News Sunday":

BIDEN: "I can hardly wait to debate [Trump] on stage. I want people to see me standing next to him and him standing next to me. Heh heh heh. We'll see who's sleepy."

WALLACE: "Mr. Vice President, thank you. Thanks for your time. Please come back in less than 13 years, sir."

BIDEN: "All right, Chuck. Thank you very much."

WALLACE: "Uh. All right. Uh, it's Chris. But anyway."

BIDEN: "I just did Chris. No, no, I just did Chuck. I tell you what, man. These were back to back. Anyway.

WALLACE: No, it's okay.

BIDEN: I don't know how you do it, early in the morning, too. Thank you, Chris.

So... we saw who's sleepy. Or just an irreparable gaffe machine.

WaPo's fact checker shows mercy to Joe Biden: "It’s a bit of hot mess, but Biden’s staff acknowledges he misspoke. We’ve corrected the record but will leave this unrated."

From "Biden falsely attacks Trump over a food stamp policy supported by Bloomberg":

In this campaign, we’ve seen Biden often get stories mixed up, mislead about his record or tell tall tales. He was talking about Trump, but somehow slipped in an attack line against Bloomberg, even using the high-dudgeon word “immoral.”

Trump has sought to tighten [food stamp] eligibility, but he has not required fingerprinting. That was an idea briefly in vogue in the 1990s, but it’s an idea whose time has passed. Meanwhile, Bloomberg still defends the practice, so it’s not even as if he’s flip-flopped on the issue.

Biden often gets stories mixed up....

Meanwhile, "Biden oddly suggests '150 million' people killed by guns since 2007."

He gets off the hook for lying because we're so sure he's just so mixed up.

And yet, after all this years-long ordeal, we're left with him as the best chance to avoid having an committed socialist as the major-party challenger to Trump. How the hell did that happen?! Well, I know how it happened, because I've been watching it happen every single day. But I still find it very, very weird.

Is it too late even to try to understand Joe Biden's calling a woman a "lying dog-faced pony soldier," or is this nothing but an absurd epitaph on a dead political campaign?

ADDED: Here's my reaction, and I have not looked at much of the commentary. I think Biden believes he's lovable, and he can kid in a silly way and people will know it's all in good fun. I don't know why he thinks he can swing around so freely when he's trying to gain the deep trust needed to be President, but I don't know why anyone pushing 80 thinks he can be President or why a grown man in politics thinks he can nuzzle and sniff at the hair of young girls other than to think he thinks he's Joe and everybody knows Joe. Joe is Joe.

That's all just pretty crazy but not all that different from Trump's confident barreling ahead, being himself. Maybe that just works. Many people get it. Some people. The only question is are there enough people who connect with that sort of thing. For Trump, there are. For Biden, maybe not, but what other path is there for Biden? Come on, people, get him — understand him the way he wants to be understood — as a fully competent, experienced politician who knows how to have fun with you lying dog-faced pony soldiers.

The only thing I'll add to that is I have and will have a special problem with "dog-faced" until Roseanne Barr is uncanceled. The greatest female comedian of all time was banished from her #1 TV show — had it snatched away and her brilliant character killed even after the actress was booted out — for the sin of comparing a woman to an animal. I was just looking at Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar speech, where he said, "I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes."

BONUS: "Dog-faced" has its own entry in the (unlinkable) OED. The examples go back to 1607:

1607 E. Topsell Hist. Foure-footed Beastes 11 He describeth them to be blacke haird, Dog-faced, and like little men.
1663 J. Mayne tr. Lucian Part of Lucian 272 That ugly, Dogg faced Aegyptian...
2002 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Oct. 332/1 Degas was not exaggerating when he revealed his dancers to have been a depressingly dog-faced bunch.

Here's that Vanity Fair article about Degas's unpleasant-looking ballerinas. Excerpt:

4 hours ago, I said I wanted to blog the debate transcript to see what was said about the miniature controversy over whether Bernie opined that a woman cannot win in 2020.

So let me follow through. Obviously, I've been in no hurry. I didn't watch the debate past the first question last night, and, though I have the thing recorded, I'm not interested in watching it now. I have the transcript, but I'm not even going to skim the whole thing. I'm only going to read through the part about this one issue, because I've been blogging about it, and I want closure on the subject. I will simulblog my reading of this one portion of the transcript.

What if they held a debate and nobody noticed?

As I mentioned in an earlier post this morning, I turned off last night's debate in the middle of the second question. And glancing around at headlines, I'm not seeing anything. I checked Twitter:



At first, I thought: Nothing about the debate. But what's this about Sarah Huckabee Sanders? It turns out that's debate-related! Checking the hashtag, I see that Sanders tweeted:



Twitter blew up about that. Apparently, that was the best fuel available for the pyromaniacs of Twitter. To get up to speed on what that was about, here's Sanders's later tweet:

I actually didn’t know that about you and that is commendable. I apologize and should have made my point respectfully. https://t.co/fbmVAqDoWI

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) December 20, 2019

And here's Newsweek, "BIDEN IMITATES STUTTERING KID DURING DEMOCRATIC DEBATE, SMACKS DOWN SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS FOR MOCKING HIM":

"My wife and I have a call list of somewhere between 20 and 100 people that we call at least every week or every month to tell them, 'I'm here,'" Biden said. "I give them my private phone number. They keep in touch with me. The little kid who said 'I-I-I can't talk. Wh-wh-what do I do?' I have scores of these young women and men who I keep in contact with."

It's not as though Sanders was mocking people who stutter. She was mocking Biden for speaking incomprehensibly. If you did have the background on Biden's experience with stuttering, you could get it in real time, and there's room to criticize Biden for being confusing or to say it brilliantly commanded attention and suckered some haters into mocking what sounded strange and accidentally looking like clods who lack empathy for persons with disability. Sanders walked right into his wily trap.

And that's the big subject from last night's debate.

But, you may be wondering, what's up with #BestPartOfMakingLove? I'll just select one:

The anticipation #BestPartOfMakingLove pic.twitter.com/aQQkYZ1lJT

— Lemon Tart (@LouiseLemonTart) December 20, 2019

I love the facial expression at 0:13. It's like: Oh, Joe, now you've done it.

.@JoeBiden makes odd joke about his parents’ sex life; “those walls were awful thin” pic.twitter.com/VXRUksmyhH

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 30, 2019

Maybe he had a vivid flashback of hearing his parents copulating right there and the thought in his head was: Mother is not going to like this.  His mother is no longer with us, but you know how flashbacks are. Inside an old man's head, a departed mother can still give him that look, can still say "Now, son..."

"For one thing, Biden's political instincts are hideously out of tune with the times and the electorate."

"Most recently he stirred up a multi-day scandal by speaking fondly about his friendship with the late Senator James Eastland, one of the most violently feral racists ever to sit in Congress (and the bar for that qualification is extremely high)."

From "Are Democrats really going to trust Joe Biden with their 2020 hopes?" by Ryan Cooper (The Week).

Hideously... recently... fondly... violently... extremely... That's a lot of "-ly." There should be a vertiginously high bar for adverbs, with or without all the "-ly"s. Who writes like that? I don't know, but I want to focus eagle-eyedly on "hideous" — with or without the "-ly."

"Hideous" is the word of the moment because of the publication of E. Jean Carroll's "Hideous Men/Donald Trump assaulted me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. But he’s not alone on the list of awful men in my life" (in New York Magazine). That article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, but the book is not called "Hideous Men." It's called "What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal." As a book title, it would be bothersomely close to "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and thus dangerously, insouciantly invites comparison to David Foster Wallace.

What did David Foster Wallace think about "-ly" adverbs? From his essay "Twenty-Four Word Notes" (in Both Flesh and Not: Essays):

Impossibly    This is one of those adverbs that’s formed from an adjective and can modify only adjectives, never verbs. Modifying adjectives with these sorts of adverbs—impossibly fast, extraordinarily yummy, irreducibly complex, unbelievably obnoxious—is a hypereducated speech tic that translates well to writing. Not only can the adverbs be as colorful/funny/snarky as you like, but the device is a quick way to up the formality of your prose without sacrificing personality—it makes whoever’s narrating sound like an actual person, albeit a classy one. The big caveat is that you can’t use these special-adv.-with-adj. constructions more than once every few sentences or your prose starts to look like it’s trying too hard.

Anyway... I was naturally and bizarrely wondering if "hideous" was getting inappropriately and tediously overworked in the press in the last few days. There's "I do have values, I swear, I just can’t recall what they are" by Alexandra Petri (WaPo):

I value the family, a theoretical entity against which people are making hideous strides all the time, mainly by being themselves in public or in private but on occasion by the throwing of unwanted parades.

There's "More and more people loathe Renoir. Is it time for a revival?" by Sebastian Smee (again, in WaPo):

Can a great exhibition redeem a less than great artist? I ask this knowing it is the wrong question. It is wrong not just because huge numbers of people think Renoir is, in fact, great, as well as adorable, joyous and life-affirming. But also because, for many of the rest of us, Renoir is not “less than great.” He is awful. Hideous. Beyond the pale. Asked for her take on Renoir, a discerning friend replied that his works provoked “visceral disgust.” His canvases, she said, were “like a painted version of Sweet’N Low.”

From "A Step-by-Step Guide to Detoxing from Your Winter Burrito Diet/Weaning off the winter is not an easy journey. We've got your back" by Kade Krichko (Powder):

Like most things, burritos are healthy in moderation. However, when your food pyramid is actually a cylinder wrapped in tin foil and you just purchased an infomercial blanket that looks like a tortilla, it might be time to face the facts.... In addition to burning that hideous tortilla blanket, take all of your burrito punch cards out of your wallet and put them into a lockbox....

From "Congress flails after Trump’s deportation ultimatum" (Politico):

“This is a response to the most hideous thing we have seen in our country — that people are dying, that children are dying right now at our hands, in our name,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said leaving the roughly 90-minute meeting, visibly upset by the discussion. “There may be changes going into it but the message is we will not tolerate this kind of child abuse that's going on right now.”

From "The Ugliest/Best Chrysler LeBaron of All Time Could Be Yours" (Automobile):

The car has honestly always struck us as being so bad, it’s good, and this re-creation strikes just the right balance of hideous and unique.

From "Starting an Instagram Clique Fixed My Fear of Group Friendships/My friendships with other women were hard-earned, closely guarded one-on-ones, until I accidentally started a thriving Instagram community" by Lauren Menchling (Vice):

I'd been interrogating new acquaintances to wildly mixed results for decades until I finally stumbled upon the real conversational secret to instantaneous platonic intimacy. The magic word is clogs. Bring up clogs, and watch what happens to the person you’ve been struggling to make chit-chat with. Her shoulders will ease, she’ll laugh, and she’ll tell you about the hideous shoes that her great aunt Rose used to stomp around in—or she’ll show you a picture of the exorbitantly priced Rachel Comey pair that she's close to buying. She’ll tell you that her husband hates clogs, but she doesn’t care, or that she refuses to become one of those depressing clog-and–sack dress ladies. Love them or hate them, everybody has feelings about clogs.

From "China forcibly harvesting organs from religions detainees killing many" (The Independent):

Part of the programme is to transform China’s organ transplant as a tourist spot, “where people needing organ transplants will pay huge sums to receive an organ. China has never adequately explained where it is getting these organs from.” The alleged victims include those practicing the spiritual meditative practice known as Falun Gong in addition to Uyghur Muslims, some Tibetan Buddhists and House Church Christians.

“The conclusion shows that very many people (detainees) have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man,” Sir Geoffrey Nice QC says.

I can't tell if "hideous" has become unusably trite, but I do see that it's deployed in 2 different ways — sometimes to describe something truly horrible (such as murderous organ harvesting) but most commonly in the comically dramatic aversion to relatively trivial ugliness (like clogs, that Chrysler LeBaron, paintings by Renoir, and random Biden gaffes).

Cory Booker's great response to Biden's "Apologize for what? Cory should apologize. He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body."

Booker's response: "For someone to show the lack of understanding or sensitivity to even know when they've made a mistake, and to fall into that defensive posture and said, 'I'm not apologizing' — that I should apologize to him! — is really problematic.… The fact that he has said something that an African-American man could find very offensive, and then to turn around and say, 'I'm not a racist! You should apologize to me!' … As Angela Davis used to say, in a time of racism, it is not enough to say that 'I'm not a racist'; you need to be anti-racist. What we need from a former vice president, from a presidential candidate, what we need from each other is to be allies, to be seeking understanding, to be seeking empathy.… So for his posture to me to be, 'I've done nothing wrong; you should apologize to me; I'm not a racist,' is so insulting, and so missing the the larger point that he should not have to have explained to him."

I'm reading these quotes this morning at my son John's Facebook page.

Biden's "Apologize for what?" came after Booker criticized him for saying "I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy'; he always called me 'son'" (and so forth). Booker's response to that was "You don't joke about calling black men 'boys.' "

Neither of those remarks makes complete sense. Why was Biden impressed that Eastland called him "son" and not "boy"? Biden isn't black. I guess Biden was just thinking about the way old men might patronize young men by addressing them as "son" and not thinking about the much more denigrating use of "boy" to address black men. That's the only sensible interpretation, really, but it does show Biden's a bit out of touch. It's unsympathetic to regard that as a "joke about calling black men 'boys.'" Not only is it unlikely that Biden was referring to the old practice of calling black men "boys," it doesn't at all look like any kind of joke.

But Cory Booker is running for President, and he's running way behind Joe Biden. He has to grab for an issue when he can. He got a lot of attention and he really hurt Biden. But he did it by deliberately pretending to misunderstand Biden (or possibly, by actually misunderstanding Biden, which is much less likely). Booker could have said, instead of "You don't joke about calling black men 'boys,'" something more like: Biden is so out of touch about race that he talks about an old segregationist calling him "son" and not "boy" without even noticing how bad that sounds to anyone who remembers the way black men were called "boy."

The newer statement from Booker is much better formulated. Quite impressive, I think. And he would never have said it if Biden hadn't gone big with, "Apologize for what? Cory should apologize. He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body."

Biden's instincts are bad! And his rhetoric is almost babyish. And clichéd — "not a racist bone in my body." That's a silly metaphor, the idea that character traits are located in particular bones. And it's also the sort of thing you say about someone else when you're vouching for them. You can't claim it for yourself. The dumbest part of Biden's statement is that it turned all eyes on Booker, who's been struggling to get some attention, and Booker took advantage.

I particularly like "it is not enough to say that 'I'm not a racist'; you need to be anti-racist." It's not that helpful to bring up Angela Davis, but the sentiment is a good one. Maybe the conversation about race would go better if we stopped accusing people of being "racist" and only criticized them for not being  anti-racist enough.

"Biden... told donors that he’s heard from 14 heads of state from around the world who’ve voiced concerns to him about Trump. That list included Margaret Thatcher..."

"... he said, before correcting what he called a 'Freudian slip,' that he was actually referring to current British Prime Minister Theresa May."

From "Biden Calls Trump a ‘Clown’ While Decrying President’s Nicknames/'There are so many nicknames that I’m inclined to give this guy. We could just start with clown."

By the way he didn't "call Trump a 'clown.'" He suggested the nickname, "Clown."

"When he says these ridiculous things he says, I mean this, I put my hand up and say, ‘everybody knows who you are’ because they do know."

I think he's trying to say I know you are but what am I?

Maybe Biden does talk with Margaret Thatcher. I remember when Hillary, in the 1990s, talked to Eleanor Roosevelt. According to a book by Bob Woodward, Hillary had sessions with Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which "studies the psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness."

Woodward says anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, joined her in sessions of imaginary conversations.... Mrs. Clinton herself wrote about her imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt in her June 10 column.... "She usually responds by telling me to buck up, or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros," Mrs. Clinton wrote....