Was this before or after the time when it would have been OK for a businessman to make “fun of a gay waiter”?
After a too-long hiatus from personal anecdotes about, for example, his imaginary stand-off against a gang of black thugs and cringe-worthy narrative of young children at a community pool rubbing his hairy legs, presidential hopeful Joe Biden is at it again.
This latest improbable tale, which he has been peddling since 2014 if not earlier, is more goal-driven than the above-mentioned stories. That is, it is meant to show how far ahead of his time Biden was in his early acceptance of alternative lifestyles. According to an interview he gave People magazine in 2018, the incident took place in 1961.
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Here he is retelling it from his Wilmington, Del. home, where he is sheltering in place during the coronavirus pandemic:
"He said, 'Joey, it's simple. They love each other.'"
Joe Biden tells a story of what his father told him in the 1960s after they saw two men kissing in public. pic.twitter.com/bxEktDrC3S
— The Hill (@thehill) March 27, 2020
So how believable is the story? It might be easier to swallow if Biden hadn’t told attendees at $1,000-a-plate fundraiser at the home of gay rights activist in Seattle last year that just “just five years ago, it would have been acceptable for a businessman to make fun of a gay waiter.” Or if he hadn’t spoken in 2019 of his “deep personal relationships” with six segregationists while in the Senate. It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing someone with his professed sensibilities would have cultivated.
