Biden, McAuliffe, Trump and Toni Morrison
I attended a political rally in Arlington, Virginia last night.
I attended a political rally for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (D) last night, which featured a stump speech by President Joe Biden. I’ve been staying in Arlington, Virginia on family business for a while, just a few blocks from the public park where the event was held, so it was an easy call for me to make. Security was evident as I arrived, but not as intense as I’d expected, and I liked the “picnic” feel of the event, even something akin to a tent revival.
I had a good seat in the stands close to the stage. The latter was well-lighted, and I noticed heavy spotlights pointed at a nearby mid-rise apartment building that had a good line of sight to the stage (this was clearly done to blind any possible shooters) and heavy equipment from the local county government lined one exposed side of the venue to prevent anyone crashing the party in their own vehicles so I don’t mean to imply security was weak, just not particularly obtrusive.
I wanted to see how the president performed in real time. I believe most Americans only get to see the president in televised White House press briefings, which are meticulously choreographed and seem to find the president reciting verbatim from a teleprompter, as well as in slickly produced campaign ads, of course. Either that, or we see a brief video clip, which often will be selected to make the president look weak (if it comes from Fox) or to make him look good (if it’s on a lot of other media). If you don’t already know that some media outlets (especially cable news) have largely abandoned objectivity and neutrality in covering national politics I don’t know what to tell you. Your perceptions likely will be guided by where you stand politically yourself.
I will try to be objective. President Biden looked and sounded much stronger than I’d previously seen him on TV. His voice was strong, he was quick-witted at times in responding to crowd distractions, and he was largely on point as far as talking about national politics as well as specific Virginia issues.
Quick-witted? While discussing the shameful Flint, Michigan water crisis, as well as the need to replace lead pipes in our water supply nationally, a heckler beyond one of the temporary fences could be heard criticizing him. “Give that man a bottle of water,” I recall the president saying, or words very close to that. I wondered at the time, and do now, if he meant clean and clear drinking water, or some of the foul water that many Americans have been forced to drink in recent years.
I looked at a few media accounts of the event this morning. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see a Fox News report online that clearly was trolling the president (with one interesting caveat that I’ll get to shortly). The story led with how people were mocking his allegedly incoherent speech and how he allegedly went off-point all the time. This was not only subjective and even hostile reporting, it was wrong on the facts. Biden does seem to stutter a bit and he’ll jump between a couple of points at times but, last night, he always came back quickly to his main points. Lots of people do this when speaking extemporaneously; they go off on tangents. I wouldn’t say Biden was even as bad as that. He never seemed to lose the thread of what he wanted to say.
Now, to be fair, the Fox online report did note defenders of the president who point out that, as president, he is one of the most scrutinized people on the planet and that every hint of trouble is magnified. In the flow of the Fox article it looked almost as if a conscientious editor felt compelled by good journalistic practice to at least put in that disclaimer.
Much of the night, from the president to other speakers, was spent on denouncing Donald Trump. There was no doubt they all were looking to 2024. But it wasn’t all about Trump; I’d say that Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring was the most cogent and focused in mostly sticking to statewide issues. Based on his presentation, I thought I wouldn’t mind living in the state permanently.
Beyond this, much of the rhetoric last night was aimed at Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s alleged effort to ban Toni Morrison’s Beloved from Virginia schools. I found that to be truly shocking, if true, so I had to check. I understand hyperbole in partisan politics and political campaigns (though I always find it regrettable) but this would amount to a new level of censorship.
In turns out that the allegation was so far from the truth as to be worse than mere hyperbole. What Youngkin overtly was supporting was a Virginia statehouse Bill that had received bipartisan support during McAuliffe’s earlier tenure in the Virginia governor’s office: the Bill, if signed into law, would have required schools to notify parents if students were assigned supposedly offensive reading material and allow the parents to “opt out” of their children’s participation in the assignment. The controversial book or books would still be part of the school’s curriculum in such instances. McAuliffe vetoed it and a similar Bill, though many school districts in the state independently allow parents to do just that, namely “opt out.”
Youngkin has been calling for support of new legislation that would make this practice statewide, but there is no evidence I saw indicating that he has called for banning books. People are reading between the lines, or they’re making a prediction of future behavior, sort of a slippery slope argument. Toni Morrison’s Beloved is at the center of the controversy because that was the book that sparked the original movement to allow parents to “opt out” statewide. You may accuse parents of wanting to censor their children’s reading material but that is not the same as calling for government to censor or ban books. I just don’t understand why politicians of either party feel they have to overstate the case when they criticize something.
They say it’s all part of democracy, I suppose, but the strains are really showing.
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Biden, McAuliffe, Trump and Toni Morrison
Great reporting--next best thing to being there myself.