Yesterday I watched pretty much the whole program on the Convention from Thursday night, which included Biden's acceptance speech, of course. It was an absolute joy to sit and watch it. As I told my husband, it seems that all things political these days are so dark and disheartening that I can take only so much; but all during the time that I watched Thursday night's program, I just felt uplifted and optimistic!
There was so much that was positive that I'd have a hard time choosing any specific aspect. But probably the highlight was when the 13-year-old boy from New Hampshire who also stutters described his interaction with Biden. As you may know, Biden has been a stutterer, and it seems that he had taken an interest in the boy and had given him hints about ways to control the problem. And this boy gave a speech last night! Talk about moving!!
Earlier in the week I heard one commentator point out that one reason why the Convention was so different is that there is no crowd noise. . . no breaks while people make standing ovations. Unfortunately, all of that gets out of hand with people standing up to applaud on almost every other sentence! This was really great because everything just moved right along. They had countless little vignettes and every one of them was positive and uplifting. But just the logistics of getting people on and off the stage for them to give their little speeches would have taken much longer. As it was, everyone appeared virtually, so moving from one individual to another was instantaneous. It was really great.
In the commentary afterwards one person commented that they envisioned that the Republicans must be in an absolute whirlwind this weekend because it will be hard to equal, much less surpass, the performance put on the Democrats.
Of course, it was impossible to sit and watch all of this without comparing Biden and his character to the piece of crap that now occupies the White House. Whenever comments about decency and high moral character were made, you were reminded of how lacking those are in the jerk. Time and after time when some little anecdote was related about the way that Joe had gone out of his way to interact with individuals and discuss their problems on a personal level I couldn’t help but smile inside.
And, his having lost his first wife and a daughter in an automobile accident, and then losing his son Beau to cancer five years ago gives him an insight into the pain that others experience when they encounter such losses. But he not only has that insight, he then relates to such people in a way that they know that he shares their pain. As I say, it is a sacrilege to even ponder the jerk at the same time. I don’t mean to suggest that Joe is a saint, but compared to the jerk he certainly approaches it.
I got a kick out of Julia Louis Dreyfuss’ comment when she noted that Joe’s faith is important to him, and she said something to the effect that since he attends church on a regular basis, he has no need to employ tear gas to disperse a group of peaceful protesters in order to get there.
