What Joe Biden Can't Bring Himself to Say

[Gothmog]

I was a stutter until about 4th grade. I find these attacks on Biden to be sad. This article about Joe's stuttering really hit home with me. The discussion of the movie The King's Speech was very moving for me.

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In Biden’s office, the first time I bring up his current stuttering, he asks me whether I’ve seen The King’s Speech. He speaks almost mystically about the award-winning 2010 film. “When King George VI, when he stood up in 1939, everyone knew he stuttered, and they knew what courage it took for him to stand up at that stadium and try to speak—and it gave them courage … I could feel that. It was that sinking feeling, like—oh my God, I remember how you felt. You feel like, I don’t know … almost like you’re being sucked into a black hole.”

Presidential candidates usually don’t speak about their bleakest moments, certainly not this viscerally. It resembles the way Biden writes in his memoir about the aftermath of the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and young daughter and critically injured his two sons, Beau and Hunter: “I could not speak, only felt this hollow core grow in my chest, like I was going to be sucked inside a black hole.”

A few weeks later, I ask Jill Biden what she remembers about sitting next to her husband during the movie. “It was one of those moments in a marriage where you just sort of understand without words being spoken,” she says.

As he watched The King’s Speech, Biden accurately guessed that the screenwriter, David Seidler, was a stutterer. “He showed me a copy of a speech they found in an attic that the king had actually used, where he marks his—it’s exactly what I do!” Biden tells me, his voice lifting. “My staff, when I have them put something on a prompter—I wish I had something to show you.”

I agree with Joe that it would be difficult for trump to use Joe's stutter against him

In Biden’s office, as my time is about to run out, I bring up the fact that Trump crudely mocked a disabled New York Times reporter during the 2016 campaign. “So far, he’s called you ‘Sleepy Joe.’ Is ‘St-St-St-Stuttering Joe’ next?”

“I don’t think so,” Biden says, “because if you ask the polls ‘Does Biden stutter? Has he ever stuttered?,’ you’d have 80 to 95 percent of people say no.” If Trump goes there, Biden adds, “it’ll just expose him for what he is.”

I ask Biden something else we’ve been circling: whether he worries that people would pity him if they thought he still stuttered.

He scratches his chin, his fingers trembling slightly. “Well, I guess, um, it’s kind of hard to pity a vice president. It’s kind of hard to pity a senator who’s gotten six zillion awards. It’s kind of hard to pity someone who has had, you know, a decent family. I-I-I-I don’t think if, now, if someone sits and says, ‘Well, you know, the kid, when he was a stutterer, he must have been really basically stupid,’ I-I-I don’t think it’s hard to—I’ve never thought of that. I mean, there’s nobody in the last, I don’t know, 55 years, has ever said anything like that to me.”

This is an issue that I have strong feelings about.

[Harker]

1. What one says can be of great importance.

How it's said ought not to be.

[DAMANgoldberg]

2. And there's this...

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[pfeiffer]

9. thank you for this...

...as i type with tears coming down my cheeks...

[redstateblues]

3. Country Music Legend Mel Tillis turned his stuttering into his trademark.

Strangely he didn’t stutter when he sang. He was a great story teller and amazingly it enhanced that.

[pfeiffer]

11. I remember Mel Tillis!

His singing voice was amazing...

[highplainsdem]

4. K&R. This is a must-read.

[Gothmog]

5. Yes it is a must read

[marieo1]

6. Served with honor

Joe Biden is one great honorable man. He has done so much for all of us over many, many years. He is just like most of the people on this planet - he has suffered untold tragedy, he has suffered a disability and risen above it - he sets a wonderful example to all of us, to be strong and go on. The dingbat in the WH isn't even fit to clean Joe Biden's shoes, he represents the derelicts just like him. We all can relate to Joe Biden through our own pain and suffering and trying to rise above it and go on.

[FakeNoose]

7. +1000 Well said Marieo1

[emmaverybo]

8. +100000! Oh, yes.

[Gothmog]

19. Here is a great interview by Stephanie Ruhl

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[Thekaspervote]

10. Anyone...anyone that can overcome a disability such as this has only grown from the experience

Go Joe go!!

[highplainsdem]

12. Linking to my OP about this article, partly for the replies there with journalists' comments

on how impressed they were by the article.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

13. My cousin

Was a stutterer. Kids bullied her because of it.

I kicked a lot of bully asses growing up,because if anyone while I was with my cousin said crap to her,hit her I would step in and proceeded to chew them out and if they tried to hit me I'd be beating the crap out of said bully .
After awhile of this the kids in the neighborhood stopped tormenting her.

I guess they either developed empathy or didn't want to deal with me. Other than that the other kids
In the neighborhood liked us and
Didn't bother my cousin about her stutter.

Eventually she stopped stuttering as she got older. The kings speech got to me too.

I didn't know about Biden's stutter.
It took him alot of courage to go there about his past.

[Gothmog]

15. Campbell is an incredible young man, and I'm proud to have played a small part in his journey.

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[Hortensis]

16. GREAT article! Thanks for posting, Gothmog.

My husband stuttered as a child. Like Joe he gets along as an adult, but it'll pop up now and then.

[Gothmog]

17. Here is a great interview by Stephanie Ruhl

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

18. Here are some great comments from Prof. Tribe

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[Gothmog]

20. Here are some great comments by Joe Biden on this article

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[Gothmog]

21. Philippe Reines has some great comments on this article

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