What Does Joe Biden’s Brain Have in Common with Beethoven and Wagner's? By Charles Taylor (Florida)
A pro-Biden essay appeared in The New York Times earlier in the year, which addressed the issue of the Biden mental decline. The piece by A.O. Scott, was entitled: "For Joe Biden, What Seems Like Age Might Instead Be Style." The main point made, seemingly in all seriousness, was that Biden may seem to be senile, but that is just his odd way, just as great artists had weird things and quirks about them. Even Beethoven, Wagner, and most great philosophers were a bit crazy.
The point about creative people being odd, even mad, is plausible. But Biden is not in the arts/philosophy game, where a selling point is the personal image and bs that one creates. He is supposed to be leader of the so-called free world, with in principle, the power to launch nuclear strikes, and hence the fate of the human race is within his power. So, one should be deeply concerned about his mental state, even if there are some checks upon launching nuclear strikes. But, not enough.
"Joe Rogan mocked a New York Times op-ed from earlier this year in which the author wrote that President Joe Biden's aging was actually part of his "style" and that he had "something in common with Beethoven, Wagner and Martin Scorsese."
"Oh, OK. I feel better now," Rogan, the Spotify podcaster who hosts "The Joe Rogan Experience," sarcastically wrote in an X post on Thursday which included a screenshot of a March 8 commentary piece by literary critic A.O. Scott.
"For Joe Biden, What Seems Like Age Might Instead Be Style," the headline of Scott's piece read.
In the essay, Scott argued that Biden's apparent signs of cognitive decline should instead be looked at as a "late style" similar to that of "certain artists" who "at the end of their careers, enter a new and distinctive phase of creativity."
Scott referenced several individuals who produced "a succession of masterpieces" that "fulfill and transcend the promise of the earlier work" including Richard Wagner, Henry James, Scorsese and Ludwig van Beethoven.
"Politics is not art. But it is a craft, a vocation, and not many people have practiced it as long or as devotedly as Biden," Scott wrote.
The essay was written following Biden's most recent State of the Union address in March, during which the president read from a teleprompter and sought to play down concerns that he was mentally slipping.
But Biden's performance at last week's first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump — during which he appeared to lose his train of thought several times and had difficulty articulating his ideas — ignited panic among Democrats who now concede that he may be too old to win a second term in office.
Since the debate last week, several media reports have surfaced quoting people who have interacted in person with the president who say that he often forgets their names and appears confused.
The essay was written following Biden's most recent State of the Union address in March, during which the president read from a teleprompter and sought to play down concerns that he was mentally slipping.
But Biden's performance at last week's first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump — during which he appeared to lose his train of thought several times and had difficulty articulating his ideas — ignited panic among Democrats who now concede that he may be too old to win a second term in office.
Since the debate last week, several media reports have surfaced quoting people who have interacted in person with the president who say that he often forgets their names and appears confused."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/books/review/joe-biden-age-style.html
"Politics is not art. But it is a craft, a vocation, and not many people have practiced it as long or as devotedly as Biden. In a profile this month in The New Yorker, Evan Osnos notes that "for decades, there was a lightness about Joe Biden — a springy, mischievous energy" that is no longer in evidence. "For better and worse," Osnos writes, "he is a more solemn figure now."
The word "figure" is well chosen; the Biden the public thinks it knows has always been, like every other politician on the national stage, a construct, a character, a persona. That "lightness" — as well as the tendencies toward verbosity, sentimentality and handiness that were part of Biden's brand as senator and vice president — was a matter of style. Which isn't to say it was inauthentic. Quite the opposite; a politician's style, like a writer's or an actor's, expresses a true self as it is filtered through the discipline of performance.
Trump's style hasn't changed. He is manifestly the same figure he has been at least since he entered electoral politics in 2015. That may be one reason that his age seems less relevant to voters.
But Biden, during his term in office and especially in the early stages of what will be his last campaign, seems different. In Osnos's account, the "mercurial mix of confidence and insecurity" that defined his earlier persona has given way to a "confidence that borders on serenity."
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