“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is,” said Vice President Dan Quayle more than 30 years ago, mangling the United Negro College Fund’s classic slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Quayle’s mistake was all over the news, the late-night talk shows, and whatever stupid place people used to go to before we had Twitter/X.
With that in mind, assuming we haven’t all lost ours, let us dig into the latest word salad from Presidentish Joe Biden, lovingly tossed and dressed with generous portions of Hidden Memory Ranch Dressing.
“Standing here in front of this portrait [Abraham Lincoln] of the man behind me,” because that’s how being in front of things works, “he, uh, he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right…”
If you aren’t already thinking that this is when Biden completely mangled the quote he was trying so hard to get exactly right, then I don’t think we can be friends any longer.
Biden continued, reading from his prepared notes, “He said, the better angel, he said, we must address the council and adjust the better angels of our nature. “
When the better angel of your nature is in need of an adjustment, please take it to see a licensed chiropractor. I’m not sure what Biden meant about addressing the council in this context, but since he graduated ahead of the valedictorian in his top-tier Super Brain Law School class at Syracuse University, I’ll defer to his greater knowledge about such legal matters.
I would like to reiterate before we get to this next part that Biden was reading from note cards.
“And we do, and we do well to remember what else he said,” the alleged current president continued. “He said we’re not enemies but we’re friends. It’s in the middle, in the, in the middle part of the Civil War.”
Lincoln’s words — not Biden’s 40-grit sandpaper approximation of them — were delivered at his first inaugural in March of 1861, about five weeks before the first battle of the Civil War was fought at Fort Sumter. But whatever. Biden means well, except when he’s calling half of the country election-denying white supremacists bent on destroying our democracy.
“He said,” Biden repeating himself and still not mentioning Lincoln by name, “we’re not enemies, we’re friend [sic]. We must not be enemies.”
“We’ve gotten, politics has gotten too bitter,” he concluded for the benefit of you knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, MAGA extremists.
What Biden had meant to say, of course, was this — or at least the first and last parts:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Lincoln, unlike our current Super Mind Brain POTUS, was an actual genius — and even a poet.
If you think I’ve exaggerated anything Biden said, watch the clip for yourself. Watching it is worse than reading it because, except for a well-delivered flash of humor at the end, my transcript doesn’t show you how weak and confused Biden sounded.
For the record, I’m not laughing at an old man’s misfortune — I’m laughing at ours.
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