2020 Election Coverage: Joe Biden

RIDIN' WITH BIDEN: AN INTRODUCTION

By Christopher Sloce

By Donkey Hotey on Flickr

Let me tell you a story. 

Once upon a time I was in a fraternity (as the tweeting horde says, let that sink in). I left for a few reasons not worth hashing out on paper. My membership came at an odd time in my life, a time when I had awoken from the nightmare of my patrilineal history and was aching for reinvention. So joined a frat I did.  I also drank a fair tick. I have since recovered from both mistakes.

The first night I officially pledged, I was floating in a sea of liquor. I’ve always been a little bigger and I’ve metabolized alcohol well, so while the first drink hits me hard, it takes a while for the rest to come on. As any experienced cosmonaut will tell you, not feeling anything is not an excuse to take more. You couldn’t have told 19 year old me that, though: drunkenness was as experimental as I got in college and I tended to experiment on myself when I did pretty hard. 

Things went swimmingly: a fight broke out. A rival fraternity called the cops on us. Police rolled through the party house. I was glued to the couch, repeating my father’s most important adage to myself: the secret to being where you’re not supposed to be is to act like you’re supposed to be there. I think I even waved at a cop. 

After the police broke things up, the dregs of the party and I stood on the porch. I had a decent wobble going, like a grazed bowling pin. All of a sudden I heard, “You guys look like a bunch of fucking pussies.” 

I spun around to see two guys, one a huge lunkhead who looked like Frankenstein’s monster in the moonlight. He repeated himself. “You guys look like a bunch of fucking pussies. I bet none of your brothers would die for you, like my homies would me.” Somehow in this I realized he was a Marine, probably after he mentioned Iraq 90 times, even though the other guy insisted he never saw any action. We started talking him down. Mind you-- I was still a pledge at the fraternity, and not a fully fledged member so I let my brothers do the talking.

However, the lunkhead went on a racist rant about how the nwords and Barack Obama were ruining this country. It was at this point I decided to open my mouth to tell this guy what was what.

“Man, shut the fuck up.”

Everyone was stunned into silence. Finally I heard, “Yeah, well, what do you know about it?”

I realized I didn’t really have a retort other than I’ve always abhorred racism. My brain was working kind of slow. My mouth was working quickly.  

“Joe Biden is my dad.”  

Everyone was completely confused by this assertion, including the lunkhead. “What?”

“Yeah, Joe Biden’s my dad. I’m Tom Biden. Nice to meet you.”

The lunkhead sat there for a second and finally went, “Yeah, well, tell your dad he’s the reason my homies are dying in Iraq.”

“I don’t care. I’m Tom Biden, and I’m going inside.” 

Somebody followed me inside. I rambled at them for five minutes about how much I hated racism when all of a sudden I heard a muffled scream of “MOTHERFUCKER!” As I ran outside, I saw two fraternity brothers between the lunkhead and another fraternity brother. I tried to waddle down the porch but couldn’t do it in time. By then the lunkhead’s buddy had pulled him away and they went off into the night, probably to punch some drywall.

Why am I telling you this story? Because it’s a more meaningful anti-racist stance than anything Joe Biden has ever done in his life. 

In fact, if you look at Biden’s record: his involvement with the crime bill, the anti-busing, and his love of talking about playing grab-ass with James Eastland and Strom Thurmond, it’s hard to say how’d he’d react. Yet, in the ultra-idealistic world of today’s politics, Joe Biden has gotten some cool cache, largely because of his connection to Barack Obama. He’s been turned into a cool uncle figure by much of the liberal media. 

To hell with that, I say. I care about what you thought about what you did before and after you did it. I care about the material impact you had. I’d argue that if it weren’t for his connection with Barack Obama, Joe Biden would be considered to be, in almost every way, a totally mediocre slob. I still believe he is. 

Yet I believe deep down Biden is probably going to get the nomination. I think there’s more resentment towards the progressive youth wing of the Democrats than people would like to admit. And for those people, there will be Biden, regaling them with tales of Mouse and the boys down at the pool hall. For a certain kind of liberal, race is an out of sight, out of mind thing: I’m fine with them as long as they’re not here, but if they’re here I have to be polite to them. For them, Joe Biden becomes a connection to the pool hall, all while he worked to keep schools from integrating and sipped Arnold Palmers at the Thurmond compound. 

That’s why the minute I saw Joe Biden use footage of Heather Heyer’s death without permission of her mother, I bet money on him getting the nomination. Obama Nostalgia is a hell of a thing: it was a lovely smelling salt to take while ignoring the slow, steady rise of a new American identitarian movement. But hey, you got your Barack and Biden solve crime coloring book out of it. Diamond Joe FTW.

So I am starting this series to follow Joe Biden to wherever he goes. Expect updates every Saturday because Saturdays are for the boys. 

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