Old Joe Cranks Out Age Quips
Sounds like, from this Guardian article, that Brandon Joe got in some great lines at the Correspondents Dinner. Some damned good one-liners in here. Worth a read just for the chuckles.
It's also worth thinking about how advancing age could be a deficit. I mean, just what IS IT that makes being “old” a liability?
Is it arthritis in the knees that might make a man take short dotardly steps instead of long masculine stride?
Is it a chronic hoarseness that that makes a voice distinctively over the hill?
Is it limited endurance, that would make a person unable to get through a stressful day of work without repeated naps?
Or is it mostly cognitive decline, with a loss of the ability to make appropriate decisions about issues big and small?
Or the inability to absorb and process information?
Or the inability to recall relevant data?
Or the inability to connect with people at a meaningful level?
And more specifically, is it the inability to connect with youth, and with Blacks and other minorities, whose votes are always critical to the Democratic Candidate?
Or is it the worry by voters that an aged President will become infirm and not be able to fulfill the office's responsibilities?
So … You can't watch Joe move about without recognizing he's up in years. But the proper response to that is, “Who cares?” He's not scaling Everest or running a mountain, he's walking up to a microphone or descending the stairs from Airforce One. Young people have hoarse voices very often. And I just haven't seen anything to suggest that he's not physically up to the job.
As to the cognitive issues, I've seen some propaganda and heard some neighbors talk about how confused and forgetful or cognitively disabled he is. A couple days ago, I even got an email from a friend slighly older than me, who shared an article he said was very worrying. This man is generally ideologically left of me on most issues. He's very smart, and utually I respect his opinion and critical thinking skills. So I read the article, noting right off the bat that it was in the English conservative rag, 'The Telegraph.' I looked up the author, a guy named Nick Allen, and very quickly found a blistering piece about him in Esquire from a few years ago, taking him to task point by point for unethical reporting support his hardnose conservative agenda.
I've also heard my neighbors quip about how senile Joe is, understanding that their reference points are short videos, a few seconds long, of Joe struggling for words. And I've seen those and other brief episodes of propaganda on Fox and the other purveyors of authoritarian intolerance. But watching Joe in any sort of structured conversation, I have never heard a thing, nothing at all, that makes me think he is losing his edge. He's always been a bit loosey goosey with impromptu comments, and then there's the stuttering thing. But his command of facts and recall of history are pretty darn remarkable. And the ability of this administration in general to strategize and take take advantage of opportunities is as good as anything I've seen in my five decades plus of watching politics.
On the other side of the coin, the critical & coveted minority and youth sectors are at best fickle and unrealistic in the best of times, with demands and expectations that are much too narrowly focused on a very specific agenda of interests seen through the filter of an inflexible and largely uninformed understanding of the limitations of a president in particular and our democracy in general.
It's probably too much to expect most Americans to cut through the ageist bullshit and see what the media is generating most of the concern about Biden's age. But hopefully the more informed young people and Black activists can say to their constituencies, “Hold on, hold on … he's doing a great job!” And if that doesn't work, then hopefully Americans “don't vote for the almighty, they vote for the alternative.”
And there's just no question at all, no room for the slightest doubt, that Joe is far and away to the stars the best alternative.