![Fire :fire: 🔥](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f525.png)
![Fire :fire: 🔥](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f525.png)
Like the proverbial groundhog, Joe Biden tentatively emerged from his Rehobeth hidey hole yesterday, wriggled his nose, tentatively looked around, and mumbled thirteen minutes of empty platitudes someone else wrote for him, swallowing loudly from time to time, slurring certain words in a brand new kind of speech impediment, grabbing the side of the desk at one point for stability, and sitting rigidly in a tight frame at his Oval Office desk (
or a reasonable facsimile thereof).
CLIP: Joe Biden addresses the nation after dropping out of 2024 race (13:23).
Groundhog Joe did
not see his shadow, which means the Nation is destined for six more weeks of awkward presidential moments. Nobody else saw his shadow either because there was no one else in the frame, and despite not working all week, after ground hogging and delivering his brief remarks, Joe had no energy left for talking to reporters or answering questions.
A giddy and euphoric New York Times, doing its best to control its barely disguised joy at Joe’s candaditorial departure, multiplied the thirteen minutes of empty rhetorical calories into at least six long stories and editorials. One of the better-written, more bittersweet than swooning entries bore the headline, “
The Beginning of Biden’s Long Goodbye.”
The Times had lots of company. Corporate media was packed with paeans to the old man. What courage! What self-awareness! What leadership!
What a forgettable speech.
The headlines gave it away. There were tons of them, but none quoted any newsworthy line. In one of his longest speeches in recent memory, President Cabbage ignored the giant groundhog in the room, neglecting any mention of how he’d gotten to this point, and avoiding any reconciliation of his many vows to stay in the race on Friday (“I'm not going anywhere!”) with pulling the plug two days later on his barely-blipping, political cardiac monitor.
It was the same old headache-inducing pattern we are, unfortunately, all used to at this point: deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny,
suddenly admit. And then shift the blame!
A picture of an actual groundhog I took on our last vacation. Not to scale.
I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll say it anyway. I’m not saying a ChatGPT deep fake delivered Biden’s Big Farewell Speech. You are welcome to decide that for yourself, it’s a free country, just ask any J6 inmate. But it sounded like a speech written by ChatGPT. Lots of bubbly words, call out to dead Presidents, rhetoric that might have been stirred if delivered by someone with a pulse, but no meaning.
So if you didn’t see it, you didn’t miss anything. We won’t miss Joe, either. Goodbye, President Groundhog. (With apologies to members of the
marmota family.)
A tale of two speeches—Joe rambled out a brief farewell and Netanyahu electrified Congress; good legal news for President Trump; great legal news for scrappy actress; Oklahoma returns to Bible; more.
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