Did you hear or read Joe Biden’s farewell address? Were you impressed?
If so, it doesn’t take much to impress you. Biden’s speech was a cliché-ridden, self congratulatory mish-mash, combined with thinly veiled warnings about all the terrible things awaiting us under Trump II.
But how did our mainstream media treat it?
Here is an angry, partisan, but nonetheless excellent compilation by conservative journalist Becket Adams, writing for thehill.com:
Unsurprisingly, the speech was a cliché-laden mess, littered liberally with clumsily cribbed bits of speeches delivered by presidents far more capable, beloved and consequential than himself. It was a bad speech.
You’d never know this from listening to the coverage. If you get your news from the people who until recently insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack,” you’d never know that his pitiful, final wheeze was a 100 percent forgettable dud.
Indeed, the industry that told you Biden was up to the rigors of the presidency thinks his farewell address was a masterstroke in statesmanship.
“In some ways, this builds on the message, the themes we’ve always heard from him that he is fighting for the soul of this nation,” effused NBC News’s Kristen Welker, calling it a “speech for the history books.”
At ABC News, the address was described as a “defense of democracy,” with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce characterizing it as a “challenge” to “Americans and the nation to carry [Biden’s] work forward.”
“He underscored the importance of American democracy and the need to protect it,” she added.
At CBS, the address was characterized as “striking,” “extraordinary” and “deeply personal.” John Adams was evoked.
Ed O’Keefe wondered whether Biden would be compared “alongside Franklin Roosevelt and LBJ and George Washington in terms of great presidents who did big things or does he end up in the conversation with Woodrow Wilson and James Garfield and John Kennedy of if they had lived longer, if they had been healthy enough, if they had been able to do more, how would we have assessed them.”
CBS’s Robert Costa took the opportunity to promote Biden’s carefully curated but entirely fictitious “everyman” image. He invoked the ridiculous trope of Biden as “‘Scranton Joe,’ as someone who was an advocate for working people.”
At CNN, the headline was this: “Biden’s poignant farewell dwells on his fears for the country he loves.”
One could be forgiven for questioning whether these people watched the same speech as the rest of us.
Wow. All that’s missing are comparisons to Churchill and William Jennings Bryan.
Now, with Donald Trump about to re-occupy the Oval Office, settle in for a far different take from these same folks on the quality of presidential speeches.
Ahhh, how lucky we are to have such neutral, unbiased media….
