Peggy Noonan finds Senator Joseph Biden, recently playing "offense" in the Alito confirmation hearings, amusing. I don't.
To me, Biden is an irritating combination of a mental lightweight attempting to conceal the fact and a bully. (Probably the too are related.)
I did enjoy this passage from Peggy Noonan's latest column:
"The great thing about Joe Biden during the Alito hearings, the reason he is, to me, actually endearing, is that as he speaks, as he goes on and on and spins his long statements, hypotheticals, and free associations--as he demonstrates yet again, as he did in the Roberts hearings and even the Thomas hearings, that he is incapable of staying on the river of a thought, and is constantly lured down tributaries from which he can never quite work his way back--you can see him batting the little paddles of his mind against the weeds, trying desperately to return to the river but not remembering where it is, or where it was going. I love him. He's human, like a garrulous uncle after a drink."
I'm not sure whether Peggy Noonan remembers the "endearing" way that Senator Biden addressed Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts during his recent confirmation hearing. Rush Limbaugh's website has the audio from the same Roberts hearing. The Senator couldn't seem to dignify Judge Roberts with his name -- it was "Judge" instead of "Judge Roberts," unless it was "judge, judge" or "man," as in "Well, I hope you don't still hold that view, man." The disrespectful tone was gratuitous and palpable. And that's hard for me to respect.
But I do have respect for Peggy Noonan, and if she says that Joe Biden is endearing, well, maybe there is something that I'm just not seeing. She says, "He's human, like a garrulous uncle after a drink."
Well, serve him another one then.
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