Joe Biden embraced me and I liked it

Apr. 05, 2019

In belatedly 2007, I was briefly a prospective candidate for Congress. For iii months, I was ushered into rooms total of mostly powerful men and given a few minutes to talk all about me. It was dizzyingly self-centered; I felt similar a political version of Willy Loman, e'er selling, selling, selling…and my product was me. No wonder, I realized, why narcissism runs so rampant in politics.

In one case during this time, I met Beak Clinton at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser. I'd gone there naively thinking I could selection his formidable brain on policy. Just his eye defenseless the gangling blonde side by side to the photographer snapping our photo, and I no longer existed.

"What a bang-up handbag!" he said to her, gesticulating toward her designer handbag just like on TV—bitter his lip, thumb and forefinger pressed together. "Come up on over and get your picture taken with me and that pocketbook." He turned, boxing me out, catastrophe my large moment. Meantime, he couldn't stop talking most that freakin' bag equally his arm enveloped the blonde woman and he leaned in close to her.

Biden'southward pressing of my flesh was jarring, yep, but not offensive. But if I'd been a woman? If I'd been objectified and treated as somehow other my whole life by men in suits? Well, then I tin totally see the Vice President's "handsiness" making me feel uncomfortable.

On one level, I was tickled—how silly I'd been to call back I could option his brain nigh Tony Blair's Baby Bonds legislation. But I was also securely disappointed. The President'south interaction with the blonde woman felt creepy. (Ever since, I've heard similar tales of Clinton Disenchantment Syndrome; ane friend, over craven wings, told the president how much he'd been inspired past him. "These are great wings!" Clinton proclaimed in response. And none other than noted feminist Charles Barkley told me that, over a round of golf, he'd become then tired of Clinton'due south ogling of annihilation remotely resembling the female form he'd felt compelled to exclaim: "Human being! You s'posed to be the president!")

But the night on my nascent political campaign trail that I was embraced by Joe Biden felt quite different. There I was, at a fundraiser high atop the Cira Heart, ushered by the host over to so-Senator Biden with the briefest of introductions: "Larry's thinking of running for Congress."

Biden'southward eyes widened, he broke into a sparkling grinning, and his arms stretched out and around me, surrounding me, pulling me in to him, tight. "You gotta do it, man," he said. "We need you, man."

At present I was in his embrace, and he moved his face in fifty-fifty closer, eclipsing the room with those gleaming white teeth, touching his forehead to mine. "Our boys demand ya, my homo," he said, referring, I took it, to those serving in our ill-advised war in Iraq. (A state of war Biden had voted for).

Our interaction lasted all of a minute, only he'd held me tightly throughout it, and I'd been seduced. It wasn't what he said, but the fashion he acted: It felt like Joe Biden cared well-nigh me. My dad was a lifelong Philadelphian and a Harry Truman Democrat who detested the divisiveness of Frank Rizzo, but on the few occasions he had met the controversial mayor, he'd felt what I'd experienced in Biden's cover. Rizzo, a large man, would, like Biden, make full the space of those before him, be they male person or female, shrinking their shared universe down to this intimate moment. "There could be a hundred people in the room," my dad recalled. "But Rizzo had a way of making you experience similar it was just you and him. You were the but thing that mattered to him."

In politics, it's chosen "pressing the flesh," and Biden has long been as good a practitioner of it as at that place is. Now, total cease: Biden's pressing of my flesh was jarring, yeah, merely not offensive. I was tickled, not invaded. But if I'd been a woman? If I'd been objectified and treated as somehow other my whole life past men in suits? Well, and so I tin totally meet the Vice President's "handsiness" making me feel uncomfortable, and even violated.

Countless hours of news coverage raising the question of whether Biden'due south inappropriate hugs disqualifies him from running for president does little more than provide our pussy-grabber in chief a imitation moral equivalency he and his followers can exploit.

That's an important acknowledgment, fifty-fifty while we try to put the story of Biden'south touchy-feeliness in perspective. The most thoughtful take on this latest cable news scandal du jour was penned earlier this week by Karen Tumulty of the Washington Mail, under the headline: "Joe Biden Needs To Cut Information technology Out. So Does The Mob." Tumulty rightfully acknowledges that we should all respect women who come frontwards about unwanted contact—and that men need to reply to those stories with a level of introspection that may exist new to some of united states of america.

"But it is likewise important—and a sign that a social movement is maturing into a social norm—to recognize that not every criminal offense is of equal severity," Tumulty writes. "Also worth factoring in is whether an alleged perpetrator was interim with malevolence or but cluelessness…Nor does it sound similar a ability move on Biden's office. To lose that sense of proportion is to dishonor the victims of the worst kinds of sexual abuse, and to abandon any hope that at that place tin can be a path to redemption for those who commit bottom ones and abound to understand the hurt they take acquired."

That seems about right, doesn't it? Without that sense of proportion, we invite false equivalencies. Not long agone, some of my fellow Jews were upset that, in response to Marc Lamont Hill's controversial statements virtually State of israel and Palestine, I'd implored his critics to debate Hill, rather than seek to silence him. "If everyone is an anti-Semite, so no one is an anti-Semite," I wrote.

Similarly, endless hours of news coverage raising the question of whether Biden's inappropriate hugs disqualifies him from running for president does little more provide our pussy-grabber in primary a imitation moral equivalency he and his followers can exploit, equally in this viral video that closes with the words "Vote Trump 2020"—and simply might reveal who Trump is about afraid of facing in a full general election:

Alas, Barack Obama used to phone call elections our "silly season," and this presidential campaign has started earlier than virtually. Continue in mind that political silliness knows no party. Is it mere coincidence, afterwards all, that, simply earlier or right subsequently announcing their candidacies, negative news stories on so many of the Democratic contenders broke? It was every bit if their Democratic opponents' opposition research had long been all fired up and ready to launch.

Think of the stories that have clouded the campaign launches so far of the 2022 campaign. In that location'south been the allegations of sexism inside Bernie Sanders' last run, Amy Klobuchar'southward temper tantrums directed at her staff, Kamala Harris' alleged doublespeak about her record equally a prosecutor, and now Joe Biden's hugs. Yep, to varying degrees, all of these stories are arguably newsworthy. Simply have they been told in context and with perspective, equally Tumulty asks? And, in its breathless reporting of these scandals, has media shed lite on disquisitional issues for us—or co-conspired with self-interested political campaigns in pursuit of more than ratings and clicks?

My hope is that Biden responds to this contretemps as Obama did in 2008, when the controversial comments of his pastor compelled him to address the issue of race caput-on in a thoughtful speech communication at the National Constitution Center. He took all the daily noise—the silliness—and turned it into a teachable moment.

If Biden runs, that's what I'chiliad hoping he brings: A sense of wisdom and proportion. He may accept taken a stride toward playing that office with his video statement earlier this week: "Social norms are changing," he said. "I empathize that, and I've heard what these women are saying. Politics to me has e'er been nigh making connections, but I will be more mindful nearly respecting personal infinite in the future. That'due south my responsibility and I volition meet information technology."

The question of whether Joe Biden tin can still exist relevant hinges on whether he can demonstrate that he's withal in a state of condign. That, unlike the man he'd seek to unseat, he tin mind, and grow, and resist the urge to react defensively—while so many on the Left are goaded into reacting to Trump like Trump would. That's the example Jennifer Rubin made for a Biden candidacy in the Washington Postal service: "When Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she wants big, fundamental modify, you can almost hear Trump bellowing 'Socialism!'" Rubin writes. "More important, yous tin also imagine the average voter saying, 'Actually, I'd just like my drug costs to go down' or 'Could you do something virtually my deductibles?'"

Rubin's argument is that maybe the respond to Trumpism isn't socialism or "Gotcha" politics so much as reasonableness. And competence. Given that 13 percentage of Trump's voters in 2022 voted for Obama twice, the Democrats just might need a candidate who can speak to disaffected working form voters, black and white.

Is that Biden? Hell if I know. Equally the reaction to his tactile politicking shows, Uncle Joe's fourth dimension may have come and gone. But possibly nosotros should be skeptical of presidents who demand on the job training. If ol' Joe can go on his hands to himself, his voice and experience ought to at least be a welcome addition to the fence.

fennellhimeduced2002.blogspot.com

Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/joe-biden-embraced-me-and-i-loved-it/

Share this post