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Get Out Your Hankies for the First Family

AP Photo/Matt Slocum

One problem with this business is that when a big story breaks, everyone writes about it on every outlet. Personally, I figured all of our readers could lead rich and fulfilling lives without me interjecting my take on the Hunter Biden pardon. I was on my way back from the office on Tuesday afternoon after a quick stop for some Christmas gifts and heard Megyn Kelly mention a piece from the New York Times that has to be read to be believed. 

The piece is titled “How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This,’” and it is quite the tearjerker if I say so myself. Here are the opening paragraphs and two choice excerpts:

A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.

Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months. The issue: a pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble, something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do.

 Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family, but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

 …

 Mr. Biden’s decision has tarnished a storied public legacy that began more than 50 years ago at the hospital bedside of two sons who survived a car crash that killed his first wife and young daughter. Several people close to Mr. Biden said the decision created a conflict between two core identities: the anguished father trying to protect his son, and the president who takes pride in standing on principle.

 …

 While both father and son expressed anger over the yearslong effort by Republicans to link Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business consulting to the president — the unproven “Biden crime family” narrative — they were almost equally contemptuous of the prosecutors who aggressively pursued both cases.

As much as I hate directing PJ Media readers to the Times, the article is truly something to behold. Perhaps it should be read aloud by candlelight with a recording of "Pagliacci" playing in the background to help set the mood. Honestly, the first two paragraphs alone are worth the price of admission. 

Why not just start the piece with "It was a dark and stormy night"? This almost reads like one of those romance novels with shiny covers on the grocery store shelves. The only things that were missing were heaving bosoms, ripped bodices, and a brawny nobleman or pirate "thrusting his sword" or something while muttering "wench" in every third line of dialogue. Or maybe Harry Potter fan fiction, which I am told used to be a thing. On second thought, that is an insult to Harry Potter fan fiction writers. Mea culpa, Gryffindor. This makes Mickey Spillane sound like William Shakespeare. And I'm a fan of Mickey Spillane. Seriously, if I had turned in tripe like that to my 8th-grade English teacher, I would still be recovering from the resulting head trauma. 

Awful writing aside (and it is monumentally awful), this exercise in apologetics may represent one of the dying gasps of a media trying desperately to stay out of the tar pits of history. One almost has trouble not believing that the authors published it as a joke, on a dare, or as the result of a bad bet. Until, that is, one remembers this is the New York Times. It takes serious commitment, albeit very little skill, to conjure up the image of dark skies over a final Thanksgiving in a borrowed compound... at Nantucket, for the love of God. 

If you have thrown up in your mouth a few times by now, try to hang on to your lunch as you read the conclusion:

John Morgan, a longtime Democratic donor who recently attended a reception for Biden supporters at the White House, said he believed that the president had felt enormous guilt over Hunter Biden’s legal problems, which the Bidens believe were so severe only because he is the president’s son.

“Joe Biden has a deep love for his son and has already lost two children and his first wife,” Mr. Morgan said. “It can’t be defended, only explained. A father’s love is so powerful that he is willing to take the heat that is coming down.”

If the Bidens are in the throes of angst, and even if their last presidential Thanksgiving was marred by "dark skies," any misery they may feel is of their own making. Hunter's problems, legal or otherwise, do not stem from being Joe Biden's son. His woes stem from a lifetime of bad choices and the decision to join his morally bankrupt father in shady business deals, the full extent of which will probably never be known. 

No one was surprised at the pardon. We all expected it. It would have been impossible to find a Vegas bookmaker who would have taken that bet.  If the media and the Democrats are put out, it is because the lying liar about whom they lied during the past four years has shown himself to be exactly who the Right and many others have been saying he is. And there is no way they can tap dance around the elephant donkey in the room this time. 

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