How Joe Biden Inspired This Reporter to Confront His Stutter [View all]

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-joe-biden-inspired-reporter-john-hendrickson-to-confront-his-stutter

For good and sufficient reason, The Atlantic Senior Politics Editor John Hendrickson had never agreed to appear on television before—and certainly not on a cable outlet where the risk of a gaffe or some other embarrassment was all too real.

“This used to be my nightmare. In some ways it still is,” he tweeted on Friday as he awaited his appearance on Stephanie Ruhle’s MSNBC show. “Fuck it. Should be on around 9:40.”

Hendrickson had been booked to discuss his groundbreaking story on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his history of stuttering. The piece—“What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say”—received attention because the former vice president, a longtime public advocate and role model for stutterers, has never before granted a media interview that is laser-focused in such piercing detail on his own childhood speech disorder, the vestiges of which are still apparent in his campaign appearances and debate performances.

Yet the story was especially compelling, indeed astonishing, because Hendrickson, 31, has struggled with his own pronounced stutter since he was 4 years old. Going on TV, for Hendrickson, was the heart-pounding equivalent of a bungee jump.

“I was definitely nervous,” he told The Daily Beast in a phone interview during which his otherwise effortless eloquence was punctuated by a halting cadence and percussive pops that approximated a verbal drum roll. “I know what I look like and sound like when I talk—and it isn’t pretty. But if I’m going to write this article and my goal is just to help people understand the disorder, then I can’t hide from it either. I had to put myself out there as well.”

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Ruhle added: “To watch a person really put his vulnerabilities out there in such a way—it was a gift that he did it. I’m so grateful. Look at all of us, with our dukes up all the time, feverishly typing tweets attacking one another. Read John’s words, but look in his eyes in that interview. That’s somebody who cares, who really put his vulnerabilities out there and put himself at risk to help people get better and smarter. That’s why he did it, in my opinion. I don’t think he did it to help Joe Biden. I think he did it to help us.”

The reaction to Hendrickson’s MSNBC appearance, and especially to his article—his first piece of writing since joining The Atlantic from Rolling Stone in April—has been overwhelmingly positive.

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Gerald McGuire, chairman of the National Stuttering Association (as well as chairman of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California at Riverside School of Medicine), also praised Hendrickson.

“You’ve got a great reporter talking about his own stuttering and coming out about it,” said McGuire, who has struggled personally to overcome a severe stutter. “Hopefully it’s going to increase awareness and decrease the stigma, and allow people to be more free about their stuttering and to talk about it openly.”

“He did a really ballsy thing,” Hendrickson’s boss, Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, told The Daily Beast. “This guy has more guts than any 20 reporters you’ll meet… Our hearts are bursting with pride.”

Hendrickson deserves all the praise he's received for writing that piece, and I'm so glad he did.

But the headline is correct -- Biden inspired it.

And oh, how we need a president who can inspire people to do their best.

And great journalists like Hendrickson to show us what the media are capable of, at their best.