Tag: Biden

Biden, a good deal too late, is making a big show of being Mister Ethics.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden unveiled a plan Monday for how his administration would prioritize ethics should he be elected president in 2020, pledging to “ensure that no future president can ever again abuse the office for personal gain.”

In a rebuke of the Trump administration, Biden pledges to “restore” ethics in government, “rein in executive branch financial conflicts of interest,” and “return integrity” to decision making in his administration.

That’s nice, but it’s a great pity he didn’t tell his son that he (the son) couldn’t use his daddy’s job in the White House as a lever to extract highly-paid jobs from Ukrainian gas companies.

The ethics plan comes a day after the former vice president’s son, Hunter Biden, announced that he will resign at the end of the month from his board role in the management company of a private equity fund backed by Chinese state-owned entities.

Fascinating, but how did he have such a role in the first place? Because of who his daddy is.

CNN piously tells us “There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.” That’s very nice, but there is plenty of evidence (and self-declaration) of this creepy tacky ugly profiteering. It’s not criminal and it may not be exactly corrupt, but it’s a good deal too close.

On Sunday, Hunter Biden also pledged to not work for any foreign-owned companies or serve on their boards should his father be elected President, and his father told reporters that his family and associates would not work for foreign companies if he is elected president, saying he would have “build on the squeaky clean, transparent environment” in the White House reminiscent of former President Barack Obama’s administration.

Blah blah blah blah, but until now Hunter Biden apparently hasn’t hesitated to profit from his father’s resumé.

I find this perhaps disproportionately enraging. Then again perhaps not disproportionately at all.

https://twitter.com/lizcgoodwin/status/1138817493064138752

Why not just tell her to go home and that she’s a slut for being out in public? Why not tell her to wear a burqa? Why not ask her grandfather what the hell he’s thinking allowing his granddaughter – a GIRL, with an actual VAGINA, and possibly pubescent little BOOBIES – to be in a coffee shop with men and boys around? Why not tell her to her face that she’s a whore and has no business mingling with male people in this whorish manner?

Or why not just say to her: “Oh hi, you are a young female person, a person who is fuckable, that is all there is about you that is of interest to anyone. Female persons are for being fucked by real people, who are male. I am one such person, your brothers are more, your grandfather is another. Why are you here? Are you here so that we can fuck you? I am confused.”

Updating to add: the photo is an old one; it’s not a photo of yesterday’s creepery.

Biden is just flummoxed that anybody gives a damn about the way he treated Anita Hill.

Biden appeared on ABC’s The View Friday morning and told the show’s five female co-hosts: “I’m sorry for the way she got treated.” But then he added that people should go back and look at what he said during those hearings, asserting, “I don’t think I treated her badly.”

And yet, Hill doesn’t agree with him. Imagine that.

Host Joy Behar said, “Here’s your opportunity right now to just say you apologize, you’re sorry. I think we can clean this up right now.”

Biden responded, “I said privately what I said publicly, I am sorry she was treated the way she was treated.”

In other words he continued to frame it in the passive voice so that no actual people can be said to have treated her the way she was treated, especially not Joe Biden. She was treated a way, a way that can’t be specified, a way that apparently had nothing to do with any human agents. Biden feels just rotten about that way. Bad bad way – let’s all get together and scold it.

Moira Donegan at the Guardian is not impressed.

In the past, Biden, under pressure from women’s rights activists and a Democratic base increasingly intolerant of sexual misconduct, has spoken of the Thomas hearings in passive terms, as something that happened rather than as something he did. At an event in New York in March, he said: “To this day, I regret I couldn’t give her the kind of hearing she deserved. I wish I could have done something.” Like his announcement, this statement partakes of a kind of rosy historical revisionism, one that conveniently absolved Biden of all responsibility. Because he absolutely could have, in his words, “done something”. He was the chairman of the committee overseeing the hearings. There was no one with more power to “do something” than him.

Biden’s non-apology to Hill, coming as it did 28 years after the disastrous hearings, six months after a similarly humiliating and futile ordeal was endured by Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, and mere days before Biden’s own presidential run, smacks of insincere opportunism. He seems to understand Hill as an annoying obstacle to his own rise, rather than as a full person with rights and dignity, whom he wronged and should make amends to.

His insistent use of the passive voice, meanwhile, makes him appear to lack an understanding of his own agency and power, like someone who will exaggerate his responsibilities for successes and disavow any role in missteps, wrongdoings and failures. As the journalist Bryce Covert put it: “There’s a huge difference between ‘I’m sorry for what I did’, and ‘I’m sorry that happened to you’.” In failing to grapple with his own blind spots, privileges, prejudices and personal failures, Biden has betrayed a lack of personal responsibility that in unacceptable in any adult, let alone in a national leader. The episode does not make Biden seem like a responsible, self-aware man who had learned from his mistakes and wants to make amends. It makes him seem like a man who wants to shut a woman up.

I wish someone could shut him up.

Oh, gee, how very thoughtful.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Anita Hill earlier this month to express his regret over “what she endured” testifying against Justice Clarence Thomas at the 1991 Supreme Court hearings that put a spotlight on sexual harassment of women, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Biden.

Earlier this month…i.e. just before he announced he’s running for president. Notice anything about that? 1991 was twenty eight years ago. He’s had 28 years to talk to Anita Hill and he does it now, a few minutes before he announces he’s running for president.

Ms. Hill, in an interview Wednesday, said she left the conversation feeling deeply unsatisfied and declined to characterize his words to her as an apology. She said she is not convinced that Mr. Biden truly accepts the harm he caused her and other women who suffered sexual harassment and gender violence.

“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose,” she said.

Especially when it took him twenty eight years to say even that…and especially when he helped land us with Clarence Thomas on the court…and especially when it was such a rat-bastard thing to do.

“The focus on apology to me is one thing,” she said. “But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.”

The Biden campaign said it would have no comment beyond its initial statement.

The Biden campaign can go soak its head.

“They had a private discussion where he shared with her directly his regret for what she endured and his admiration for everything she has done to change the culture around sexual harassment in this country,” said Kate Bedingfield, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, who declared his presidential candidacy on Thursday.

Why? Why did he do that? Anything to do with his decision to run for president? Anything at all?

Where was he before that? Where was he during the past two years? And during the Obama administration? And during the Bush 2 administration? And during the Clinton administration? And during the last couple of years of the Bush 1 administration? That’s a lot of time when he could have shared with her directly his regret for what she endured and his admiration for everything she has done to change the culture around sexual harassment in this country. But he didn’t. He didn’t do that until now, when it’s in his interest to pretend he’s not just another oblivious white dude who forgets that white dudes aren’t the only people who count.

I wonder how the conversation went. “Gee, Professor Hill, I’ve been meaning to have this chat for the past 28 years and I just never did manage to find your phone number.”

Mr. Biden has long cast the hearings in passive terms, as something that happened to Ms. Hill, not something he and others did to her. Ms. Hill has said in the past that Mr. Biden has never directly apologized for his actions.

Men are good at that. Men are really really good at that. It’s always something that happened, something that was said, something that was done, but it was never anything they said or did.

Last month, at an event in New York honoring students who fight sexual violence, Mr. Biden acknowledged his role in a moment that remains seared in the minds of many women.

“She faced a committee that didn’t fully understand what the hell this was all about,” he said. “To this day, I regret I couldn’t give her the kind of hearing she deserved. I wish I could have done something.”

He could have; he chose not to.