Biden: Endgame
Should we turn the franchise over to someone who has never carried a movie?
The anticipation of the last installment of a storied franchise changes the way we see it. We bring the entire history of our relationships with the characters to the movie. We crave Easter eggs, fan service, and emotional resolution. We place impossible expectations on it, which is probably why I was so disappointed by Joe Biden’s announcement video. In fact, I got bored and turned it off halfway through before he started hawking cemetery plots. And that’s when I realized the fundamental fact about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden isn’t a super hero. He’s a sidekick. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Joe Biden is Drax the Destroyer.
You like Drax because of his unguarded inappropriateness, but he’s no leading man. Drax isn’t Black Widow, for crying out loud. Joe Biden has never carried a movie before, and not for lack of trying. We remember him plagiarizing the British politician in 1988; less remembered are the four campaign slogans, the campaign in-fighting, and the revelation of plagiarism in law school. He dabbled in casual racism in 2008, only to be rescued by Barack Obama in more ways than one. Lately, he keeps misstepping when it comes to the way he presses the flesh, and he can’t quite square up to his role in Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
The video was — and here we all feel bad about criticizing Uncle Joe — fine, I guess. It looked like what a DC-based campaign that has too many media consultants and Big Feet advisers thought adequately represented sincerity. I felt talked down to. He didn’t sound as sharp, his makeup distracted me, and he didn’t seem to believe what he was saying even though no one of good faith could have possibly disagreed with a word of it. The piano soundtrack made me worry that he was going to sell reverse mortgages. But it was fine, I guess.
I suppose we should be grateful, knowing how prone Uncle Joey B. is to unguarded utterances. At least he didn’t leak the ending of the Avengers movie or that Rami Malek is the next Bond villain. I’m not saying Democratic insiders are worried about Biden’s lack of discipline, but his campaign slogan should be “No Spoilers.”
Behind the scenes, this appears to be a too-many-cooks situation. The word is that he’s got competing media consultants editing each other’s work, and you can identify his senior staff by which White House job they think they’re getting. This one wants to be Secretary of State, that one has his eyes on National Security Adviser... The whole thing gives off a top-heavy vibe of assumed inevitability. As a friend of mine who’s done time in the White House said, “It’s not the Hillary campaign… yet.”
It makes me sad that we’re going to have to live through this campaign with a meta message of appeal to voters who wouldn’t vote for the wonky professor, the black woman, or the gay dude. The subtext of his campaign is that he’s the only one who can appeal to those voters who don’t really like you all that much, who have closed themselves off to the evolving definition of what it means to be an American in good standing. And those voters will be mythologized, as if their acceptance by Biden’s proxy is more valuable than choosing a leader who shares your worldview. And because this is Joe Biden, he’ll probably say the subtext out loud and then scold us for not seeing things his way, and then I’ll feel guilty. We’re going to have to see a man for whom we have genuine affection remind us why he never succeeded at this before. His faults will be laid bare, he will do this himself, and we’re going to have to watch it.
What I’m reading
This examination of the reaction to the Buttigieg Boomlet is so much better than what I wrote last week that it made me want to quit writing.
The unwritten rules for the exit row make complete sense, and now I never want to sit there again. Also, it makes sense that airlines should not charge to sit there.
The most-hacked password in the world is predictable. The best way to come up with a secure yet memorable password is not. This is a funnier take on the same data.
“Computational inference” is the kind of thing that freaks privacy hawks out. Long story short, even if you’re not online, you’re online. Facebook has a shadow profile of you even if you’re not on Facebook.
Rendering scientific findings in plain English is hard for many scientists, but was making an AI machine to read scientific papers and summarize them really the best idea?
Newspapers? Toast, says Warren Buffett. This quote is like a depressing koan: “It upsets the people in the newsroom to talk that way, but the ads were the most important editorial content from the standpoint of the reader.” Meanwhile, journalism is booming in branded content. And if you ever wondered how people around the world are getting news, this is your lucky day.
Is Lizzo, who grew up in Houston, the new Beyoncé? Can Lizzo be commercially co-opted and subversively inclusive at the same time? Did you know she majored in flute at the University of Houston? Me neither.
Unfiltered authenticity is the new avocado toast on Instagram, apparently.
Most Americans are politically correct but don’t think they are: “Adults who said there’s too much political correctness in the country were nearly three times as likely to say they tried to meet the political correctness definition than they were to apply the label to themselves.” Spend some time with this one. Fascinating data on how we can prime each other to think differently.
You should always read Sally Jenkins, especially when she writes smart things about the economics of trading down in the draft.
Bruce Mehlman has a new deck out.
What I’m pre-ordering
Stephen Harrigan’s Caro-length Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas.
Karen Olsson’s The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown
What I’m watching
This bonkers double play
Glass, a criminally underrated look at what the real super powers are
What I’m listening to
Walker Lukens’ excellent new album, Adult.
“Sunlight” is a great track on Nick Murphy’s new album, Run Fast Sleep Naked. This song reminds me of being at a dinner party at Chris and Shalini’s.
SOAK’s new album is getting a lot of run, and the lead single, “Everybody Loves You,” is a good soundtrack for a relaxed bad mood.
Kevin Morby’s throwback “OMG Rock n Roll” is my favorite new song in a while.
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