The Heartless Walter Mitty
It isn't empathy to constantly upstage the suffering of others
When Joe Biden finally visited Maui on Monday, the first thing I thought was, "He’s not going to recount that stupid kitchen fire anecdote, is he? I mean, even Joe can't be that heartless."
Well, Joe was that heartless.
As I was having my morning cup of tea yesterday, I saw the video of Joe recounting the stupid kitchen fire.
Over the years, Joe has transformed that 2004 incident from the small kitchen fire it was into the Towering Inferno.
Biden told the people in Lahaina, the town where more than 850 people are still missing and at least 115 are dead, that the fire, which was contained to the kitchen and put out by firefighters in 20 minutes nearly cost him his wife, his classic Corvette, and his cat.
Why bring it up at all?
Because upstaging every occasion is Joe Biden's raison d'être.
One woman on Twitter (sorry, X) summed it up perfectly. Like Barack Obama, Joe Biden is the bride at every wedding.
But unlike Obama, who typically upstages things by being oblivious (like speaking over "God Save the Queen" in front of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II), when Joe Biden upstages things, he does it by indulging in fictional tales of woe that grow bigger with each retelling.
No matter whose story it is, Joe Biden insists on casting himself in the starring role.
He uses this minor kitchen fire from nearly 20 years ago for the same reason he exploits the death of his son Beau.
While allegedly "paying respects to the lives lost in Maui" on Monday, Biden trotted out his other favorite tale of personal tragedy, the death of his first wife and baby daughter.
The guy is a heartless Walter Mitty, spinning fantastical falsehoods as a way to upstage the grief and pain of others.
It's childish, thoughtless, and often cruel.
But his supporters don't care.
To Biden supporters, especially those in the media, Joe’s self-indulgence is his way of showing "empathy."
CNN reporter Bill Weir said of the president's Maui visit that Biden "said the right things" and acted as the "empathizer-in-chief."
No, Bill. That wasn’t empathy. It was narcissism.
If someone is dying of cancer and you sit at her bedside recounting the time you got a nasty paper cut, you aren’t saying the right things or empathizing. You’re being a self-centered prat who has to make everything about you.
If any Republican president indulged in this kind of heartless, self-absorbed twaddle, everyone at CNN would be clutching pearls in horror, especially if the same Republican president had spent the previous week vacationing while the people in Maui were combing through the burned-out rubble looking for bodies.
The media created the fiction of Joe Biden as a loving, caring, compassionate, empathetic family man. As a result, they are obligated to keep up the fiction in the face of all evidence to the contrary, even if that means spending four years pretending his seventh grandchild didn't exist or ignoring the Gold Star families whose loved ones were lost in the 2021 terrorist attack in Kabul.
Between now and Election Day, the media and Biden will be competing to see which of them can concoct the most outrageous lies about this heartless, hapless president.
And given his decades of experience, my money is on Joe.