The Untalented Mr. Biden

Can we just be done with Joe Biden already?

In a more dramatic fashion than perhaps any other presidential candidate - certainly more so than the politically ham-handed John Kerry - Sen. Joseph Biden has shown himself to be lacking in the temperament and judgment that would seem to be requisites for occupants of the Oval Office. By way of his recent commentary to the New York Observer regarding his Senate colleague and fellow Chief Executive aspirant Barack Obama, Biden has shown himself to be more than the victim of a "botched" quote (to paraphrase the other blowhard Democrat senator.) Indeed, Joe Biden reveals himself to be a buffoon of Falstaffian proportions. But more importantly, he shows that he is also haughty, judgmental and racist, in as much as he presumes to have the right to divide "clean" and unclean blacks.

At root, Mr. Biden's remarks stem from a sense of entitlement that emanates from what I would call definitional indemnity. In other words, by definition, a liberal can never be credibly seen as a racist. This indemnification is assumed by white liberals, and is dutifully reinforced by black liberals. All of which explains the fact that a former Ku Klux Klan member can represent West Virginia in the Senate as a Democrat, and has been able to do so since 1959. This is in spite of the fact in 1946 Robert Byrd wrote a letter to Samuel Green (the Imperial Wizard of the KKK at the time) which stated, "[t]he Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia."

The phenomenon of definitional indemnity is exemplified by the remarks of the president of the West Virginia chapter of the NAACP as recounted in a June 19, 2005 Washington Post article, in which James Tolbert expressed his belief that Sen. Byrd has transcended his association with the KKK by embracing more "enlightened" social views and by owning up to his racist past. Tolbert is quoted as saying "[h]e doesn’t try to lie his way out of things. If he’s wrong, he’ll say he’s wrong."

Definitional indemnity also explains why during a June 2005 speech at a Washington, D.C. fund raiser, perennial presidential candidate and all around liberal do-gooder Ralph Nader felt comfortable in describing how the Democratic Party’s efforts to keep him off presidential ballots in 2004 made him feel "like a nigger." It didn’t hurt that Nader had the Rev. Al Sharpton to vouch for him, saying "Nader is not a racist by any stretch of the imagination." And it accounts for how at a 2006 MLK Day rally, hosted by Rev. Sharpton in a Harlem church, Senator Hillary Clinton was able to get away with referring to the then-GOP controlled House of Representatives as "being run like a plantation," adding "and you know what I’m talking about."

Predictably, black Democrats such fellow Senator Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson came to Hillary’s defense, with Senator Obama saying, "[t]here’s been a consolidation of power by the Republican Congress and this White House in which, if you are the ordinary voter, you don’t have access." (How a consolidation of political power through clearly democratic means approximates life on a plantation is not clear to me, but I admit to lacking clarity as it regards the liberal take on plantation life during slavery.)

And black liberals provide political defilade in this current kerfuffle as well, with Rev. Jackson suggesting that Sen. Biden was "just babbling." For his part, Sen. Obama said that he, "didn't take it personally," adding, "I don't think [Sen. Biden] intended to offend." (If you still submit that there is no difference between how liberals are regarded on the issue of race versus conservatives, just ask yourself what would happen if any of these things were said or done by, let’s say, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich or Ronald Reagan.)

As always, this situation reinforces that it is not for African American conservatives to explain their Damascus Road conversions from liberalism to conservatism. Indeed, it is the black liberal that has much for which to account, and many questions to answer. A good question to start with is...

Can we just be done with Joe Biden already?