Biden Opens His Mouth

Outside Invesco Field, the Democratic running mate jokes about being veep with a National Guardsman:

“If I had your hair I’d be president, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t be screwing around with this job.”

As written:
“We remember Teddy K tripping over Barack Osama…er. Obama, er…never mind–”

Should read:
We remember Teddy K tripping over Barack Osama, er…Obama, er…never mind–

As written:
“[(] and potential doubs about the “ier” as either a Spanish or French phoneme).”

Should read:
[(] and potential doubts about the “ier” as either a Spanish or French phoneme).

But then is the guy who stated that in the scheme of things (during some meeting or another) he’d rather be home making love to his wife. Which raised the obvious question, yeah Senator, but would she rather you weren’t?

No I’m sure they’re very happily married and they do the horizontal bop as much as possible at least as long as the kids are asleep and there isn’t a TV camera or a microphone around to distract him. Because she’s super pretty and has her doctorate. Which is all a woman needs.

I wonder what Fred Thompson’s “trophy wife” would think of all this?

Now, anyone can trip over a name, but at such a moment? And this name, of all names? The moment is fraught with possible meanings–much as the name is fraught with verbal pratfalls–beyond the fact that Biden simply is not totally on ‘running mate’ terms with Obama.

We remember Teddy K tripping over Barack Osama…er. Obama, er…never mind–but that was in the early-morning fog of the campaign nearly two years ago. How to rationalize such a stumble now?

Phonetically, the name is not hard to pronounce (certainly, it is less so than, say, “Javier” with its invitation to improvise on the initial letter as a sonorous J or an aspirated H, or if written with an X–Xavier–an anglicized or gallicized Z; and potential doubs about the “ier” as either a Spanish or French phoneme).

Subliminally, however, there’s the exoticness angle, the purported (and officiously disproved) Muslim angle, and on and on. Even our knowledge of the teenage-phase, melting-pot, integrationist, assimilationist nickname “Barry” does not obviate, but highlights, the fact that as names go, Barack Obama’s surely sounds foreign, even now, in an American context (and this despite the bearer being the distilled product of a quintessentially American process of acculturation).

Barack is, in fact, an Arabic name (as is his middle name, Hussein); and Obama, with its apparent African sonority is, as far I know, also Arabic (correction on this point is welcome).

But “Barack America”? Now here we have something new and different from Teddy’s phonetic fumble. Here we have, perhaps, an attempt at the personification of the country in the man. Here is the final enfleshment of Barack as The One; the embodiment of The Movement that will cause the swelling seas to subside.

One cannot help thinking that Biden may simply have been on the verge of such a monumental gaffe as his tongue negotiated “Barack” and elided onto the “O”…”Barack Osa…”–scratch THAT!…”Barack Ahmed…”–oh no!…”Barack Amadin…”–what am I thinking!…that in that split-second of horror as he faced his audience, his brain did one last synaptic pirouette and out it came: “The next president of the United States: Barack America!”

All hail!