Item one: What is Joe Biden too old to do? |
We’re talking—and talking—about Joe Biden’s age this week. He’s old. It’s a real issue. It’s a legitimate concern. No one likes the fact that he’s 80. It dampens enthusiasm for his reelection. And there has been a large volume of reporting that suggests that many people, including many Democrats, aren’t especially enthusiastic about his vice president. I recall hearing a news item recently that explained that among the cohort of poll respondents who dislike both Biden and Donald Trump, while their preference is for neither man to run, if pressed, they favor Trump strongly. I’m sure this is not just because of Biden’s age. It has to do with inflation and, I believe, the general state of trauma in which most Americans, having taken collective blow after blow, now live. This last point is little discussed, but it is the topic of Ana Marie Cox’s shimmering cover story in the October issue of The New Republic, which I think explains more about the dyspeptic national mood than anything else I’ve read. And yet: I think about those poll respondents mentioned above. Really? Is Joe Biden that bad? They’d really rather have Trump? |
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Biden’s age was a topic of conversation on Morning Joe earlier in the week, and Al Sharpton asked a good question: “What is Biden too old to do?” Is he too old, Sharpton wondered, to steal nuclear secrets and other classified documents? In knowing violation of the law, as Trump may have just accidentally admitted to Megyn Kelly Thursday? It’s an excellent question—it flips conventional logic on its head and forces us to consider the problem of Biden’s age not in the usual moral vacuum but in a moral context vis à vis his likely opponent. In that spirit, let’s pose a few more of these inquiries. Is Joe Biden too old: | • | to insist that his inaugural crowds were the biggest of all time, sending his quaking and feckless and ill-attired press secretary out there to tell an obvious and totally unnecessary and pointless—but all too tone-setting—lie on his very first day in office? | | • | to have an adviser, trying to spin her way out of that lie, speak in all seriousness of “alternative facts” that he believed in and adhered to? | | • | to demand personal loyalty from his FBI director at a private dinner, at a time when it was known that his own campaign might be under FBI investigation? | | • | to invite the Russian foreign minister to the Oval Office and reveal highly classified information to him there that “jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic state”? | | • | to fire the aforementioned FBI director and admit on national television that he did so because the FBI was investigating him? | | • | to doctor a hurricane forecast with a Sharpie to make it seem like an obvious lie he told was correct, potentially frightening millions of people in one state into worrying that their homes might be destroyed or they might have to flee when they were never under threat? | | • | to get the Boy Scouts—the Boy Scouts!—to boo his predecessor? | | • | to assert that a crowd of white nationalists carrying torches and chanting “You will not replace us” included “very fine people”? | | • | to try to buy Greenland? | | • | to try to find a way to bomb Mexico? | | • | to want to use a nuclear weapon on North Korea? | | • | to say that he believed a murderous autocrat over his own country’s intelligence agencies? | | • | to constantly mock the U.S. military and its generals and say that he—whose “military experience” ended in boarding school and, later, included a bone-spur deferment that got him out of being drafted into the armed services during the Vietnam War (thereby forcing some other young, less connected man from Queens to go in his stead)—knew better than all of them? | | • | to say that certain members of Congress should “go back” to their own countries, when most of them were in fact born in the United States and the one who wasn’t became a citizen in 2000 at age 17? | | • | to watch a dangerous virus spring to life across the globe and be warned universally by experts that his government had better buy ventilators and masks and resolutely refuse to do so? | | • | to say, just as that virus was reaching American shores, that “when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done”? | | • | to make that statement, and many, many others like it, even while knowing that the truth was much uglier and the virus much more dangerous (“deadly stuff”), because he wanted to “play it down”? | | • | to suggest seriously that people should inject chloride as a cure for that virus? | | • | to wallow in such inaction that said inactions were responsible, according to a highly respected medical journal, for 461,000 excess U.S. deaths? | | • | to order the tear-gassing of peaceful protesters so that he could walk to a church and use it as a prop, standing in front of it, holding a Bible? | | • | to threaten to withhold crucial aid to a foreign head of state unless said head of state agreed to announce an investigation into his top political opponent? | | • | to openly encourage an armed assault on the U.S. Capitol, marking the first time the Capitol was stormed by a mob since the War of 1812, and the first time ever it was stormed by Americans? | | • | to make attempt after attempt to steal an election, telling lie after lie after lie on social media, eventually losing 61 of 63 court cases? | | • | to make himself, day after exhausting day, hour after ceaseless hour, the center of attention, demanding that we focus our thoughts on him, as authoritarian leaders do? |
I’ve barely scratched the surface here. The point, of course, is that no, Joe Biden is not “too old” to have done these things—people can be corrupt and venal and stupid and hateful and arrogant at any age. These are just things that Biden would never, ever do, because within his long life and political career there is an abundance of proof that he respects the Constitution, tradition, and our governing institutions. So, to those voters more repulsed by Biden’s age than Trump’s deeds: Is your memory really that short? Do you seriously want to live through all this again? And all the above, of course, is to say nothing of the far worse things Trump has already told us he will do if he’s returned to the White House, from insisting on loyalty to him rather than the Constitution to handing Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. I don’t believe that most voters are that shallow. Some may be, but most aren’t. However, they have to be reminded of all these things. The Democrats are going to have to inspire voters to recall what those four years of chaos, corruption, and misrule were like, living through the 30,753 lies, the constant tension and drama, the horrors of those early days of Covid that could have been much better (as they were in other countries), and the rest of the nonsense that peppered the tenure of the also-advanced-in-age Trump, when he had his chance to do it right seven years ago, and failed. |
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Item two: Why you shouldn’t worry about this Hunter Biden indictment |
The media, even MSNBC, pant over the words “Hunter Biden” like a famished dog over the remains of a toothsome steak. I’m here to tell you: Ignore it. Or at least, most of it. Yesterday’s indictment on gun charges only serves to reinforce my point. First of all, these are in fact very minor gun charges. There are three counts: The first is that he is alleged to have lied on a federal form, when he purchased the gun in 2018, about his substance addiction, which is illegal. The second is kind of a repeat of the first—that he lied to the gun dealer. The third is that it’s illegal to possess a firearm while in the throes of addiction. If that sounds to you like pretty minor stuff in a world where guns are a constant source of public trauma and breaking-news mayhem, you’re not wrong. All manner of legal experts have been on the tube saying that if he didn’t have the famous last name he does, these charges would never have been brought. It’s hardly crazy to suspect that the Delaware, Trump-appointed prosecutor, David Weiss, may be caving to GOP pressure. Abbe Lowell, H.B.’s famous counsel, said the gun was never even loaded: “Hunter Biden possessing an unloaded gun for 11 days was not a threat to public safety, but a prosecutor, with all the power imaginable, bending to political pressure, presents a grave threat to our system of justice.” Assuming that’s true—that he owned it for less than two weeks and never shoved a bullet in the cartridge—can you imagine a jury deciding to throw the book at the guy for a crime like that, especially since it was five years ago and he has apparently sorted himself out? Besides that—the law under which the charges were brought was struck down by a Fifth Circuit appeals court as violating the Second Amendment (though the Fifth Circuit ruling applies only to Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, not Delaware). In other words, if these same charges were brought against Eric Trump, he’d be a Second Amendment martyr. It’s all nonsense. Not one American is going to cast a vote on the basis of this indictment. The Hunter saga isn’t over, but this latest plot development is barely a blip. |
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Item three: Ex-Speaker McCarthy? |
Little Kevin had a little tirade Thursday. “If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the fucking motion,” he told his GOP colleagues. You know the backstory—his colleagues are threatening to shut down the government, and they are insisting on staging an evidence-free impeachment hearing. This is not the time or place to get into the details on either of those coming attractions. Here, I merely want to remind you of this simple point, in case you’ve forgotten it: The Republicans are not there to govern. Our textbooks taught us that our parties send people to Washington to make laws and that, while they have different ideas about what laws to make, that’s the basic function upon which they agree. But for today’s neofascist Republican Party, that is not their function. Instead, they use their offices to sow confusion, wreak havoc, mount political stunts, and make the public suspicious of our laws and our democracy. There exist a few Republicans who still adhere to the old-fashioned norms, and we should support and extend our sympathy to them. But they are a tiny minority, especially in the House. Most of them, or at least a critical mass of them, have the legislative mindset of fascism, which is that bourgeois democratic norms and the sharing of political power with other parties are indicative of a weakness that can only hinder the greater cause of securing total power in the name of imposing the movement’s will upon the populace. When Kevin McCarthy proves to be an obvious impediment to that cause, someone will indeed file the fucking motion. It’s only a matter of time. |
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Last week’s quiz: Boardwalk or Park Place? On this history of American board games, with an unapologetic Boomer emphasis. |
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1. On the original, Atlantic City–based Monopoly board, what color are the squares for Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor Avenue, and Marvin Gardens? |
A. Light Blue B. Yellow C. Red D. Orange |
Answer: B, yellow. Should have been easy to remember because Ventnor and Marvin Gardens were names that stood out. |
2. The other classic Parker Brothers game, Careers, featured an external ring of squares and internal “occupation paths” that the player could pursue by landing on the right square. These changed often over the decades, but in the original mid-’50s version of the game, which of the following was not one of the seven occupation paths? |
A. Medicine B. Uranium Prospecting C. Big Business D. Farming |
Answer: A, medicine. Yes, uranium prospecting, in those days of nuclear ambition and Cold War paranoia, was an occupation! |
3. In Clue—invented in the U.K. and called Cluedo (?!) over there—there are two secret passages joining four rooms in opposite corners of the board. One of those passages joins the Lounge to which room? |
A. The Kitchen B. The Billiard Room C. The Conservatory D. The Hall |
Answer: C, the Conservatory. That was the one with the tiled floor and was my favorite. |
4. Operation was introduced by Milton Bradley in 1965. Order these “bones” from highest point in Cavity Sam’s body (he’s the figure on the board) to the lowest. |
A. Bread Basket B. Adam’s Apple C. Charlie Horse D. Wish Bone |
Answer: Adam’s Apple (throat), Wish Bone (ribs), Bread Basket (stomach area), and Charlie Horse (thigh). I played this a few years ago with my daughter and was terrible. |
5. In the classic 1970s game Mastermind, how many possible color combinations are there for the codemaker to present to the codebreaker? |
A. 444 B. 1,296 C. 3,024 D. 6,248 |
Answer: B, 1,296. There are six colors and four squares, so it’s six to the power of four permutations. |
6. Match the color to the category in the original Trivial Pursuit game. |
Green Pink Blue Yellow Brown Orange |
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Geography Sports & Leisure Science & Nature Entertainment History Arts & Literature |
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Answer: green, Science; pink, Entertainment; blue, Geography; yellow, History; brown, Arts & Literature; orange, Sports. I never thought many of the questions in Trivial Pursuit were in fact mere “trivia.” But I played it a lot anyway. |
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This week’s quiz: In the mood … taking you back to the music of the Big Band era, which everyone should know a little bit about, come on. |
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1. This bandleader and his jazz orchestra debuted George Gershwin’s masterpiece “Rhapsody in Blue” in New York in 1924: |
A. Duke Ellington B. Fletcher Henderson C. Elihu Root D. Paul Whiteman |
2. This big Glenn Miller Band hit had one lyric—the phone number people had to dial to reserve a table to see the band play at its regular Manhattan venue. What was that number? |
A. LEnox8-8888 B. PEnnsylvania6-5000 C. PLaza5-4321 D. CArnegie9-3000 |
3. With whose Big Band did a young Frank Sinatra sing? |
A. Artie Shaw B. Tommy Dorsey C. Jimmy Dorsey D. Benny Goodman |
4. Match the hit to the band. |
“Take the A Train” “Chattanooga Choo Choo” “Begin the Beguine” “Sentimental Journey” |
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Les Brown and His Band of Renown The Artie Shaw Orchestra Duke Ellington and His Orchestra The Glenn Miller Band |
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5. Big Band music kept Americans’ spirits elevated during World War II. In the Glenn Miller–Andrews Sisters megahit of 1942, what did the enlisted soldier warn his girlfriend not to do with anyone else but him “’til I come marching home”? |
A. Go off to the movie show B. Go down to the Jersey shore C. Sit under the apple tree D. Go makin’ eyes under moonlit skies |
6. There were many famous women Big Band singers, like the aforementioned Andrews Sisters, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and many more. Who below was not among the female leads who were stars then but are less remembered today? |
A. Jo Stafford B. Gene Tierney C. Kay Starr D. Helen O’Connell |
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I think these were easy, but then again, my parents were alive at that time, so I absorbed this through pop-culture osmosis. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com. —Michael Tomasky, editor |
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