Is Joe Biden the White (Bogey)Man He Warned Us About?

The presidential candidate increasingly referred to as “Creepy Joe” certainly had a bad weekend. The latest in what seems to be a long list of inappropriate intimacies inflicted on much younger women by the 76-year-old Joe Biden hit headlines via New York magazine on Saturday.

According to the alleged victim’s report, Biden came up behind 35-year-old Lucy Flores, who was a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in Nevada, at a 2014 campaign event in Las Vegas. Flores claims he then proceeded to give her a slow kiss on the back of the head. In light of what others have accused the former vice president of doing, she got off rather lightly.

This makes Biden’s remarks against sexual harassment and the “white man’s culture” in a March 26 speech interesting. It turns out that the very faction of the Democratic party—the progressive #MeToo feminist wing—that he was attempting to ingratiate himself with (some might say pander to) just might decide that he’s the kind of man they don’t want representing the Democratic Party anymore, much less getting their nod for president. Revisions and Dissents... Gottfried, Paul Best Price: $29.00 Buy New $29.00 (as of 03:55 UTC - Details)

Speaking at an event hosted in part by the Biden Foundation and It’s On Us to honor students who have worked to end sexual assault on college campuses, Biden bewailed the “white man’s culture,” and said that as our next chief executive, he would try to root it out. Addressing his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Anita Hill cross-examination in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Biden said he regretted not being able to give Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment, “the hearing she deserved.”

Biden went on to say he not only needed to change “the law” but “the culture” and brought it all back to 14th century England, as though nothing had changed in America since then:

You all know where the phrase ‘the rule of thumb’ means? ….In the 1300s, so many women were dying at the hands of their husbands because they were chattel, just like the cattle or the sheep, that the court of Common Law decided they had to do something about the extent of the deaths. …You know what they said? No man has a right to chastise his woman with a rod thicker than the circumference of his thumb. This is English Jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change. It’s got to change.

[Editor’s Note: the original article has been changed to reflect the correct reference to the 14th century in Biden’s speech].

That of course was seven centuries ago. Today, thankfully men subject to “Anglo-American law” are not permitted to beat women to death, much less chastise them with a cattle prod. But it does make for good speechifying, reminding women what their 14th Century counterparts went through, as though it were yesterday. We’re surprised he didn’t allow for a “you’ve come a long way baby,” too.

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