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Poor Joe Biden

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Tom Brokaw continues as a disappointing substitute for Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press." After spending a few pleasant minutes with Joe Biden on Sept. 7, Brokaw launched into an attack of sorts on Biden's connections to MBNA. Although Russert would have had the relevant clips on the screen front and center, Brokaw started by reading them from material in front of him. Brokaw went on and on, and in the end proved totally overmatched by Biden.

Biden quickly pointed to "how poor" he was, which has some basis in fact, but which may not have been the right defense for the questions Brokaw was stumbling with.

In the land where Brian Williams is king, NBC still needs to replace Brokaw, who is in way over his head. "Meet the Press" may become a vehicle for pushing books. Woodward comes next Sunday, but a week after he does "60 Minutes."

***ALSO, of the "Biden forgot to cite Kinnock once" discussion, note a criticism of fuzzy thinker Daniel Ruth :

Of --Biden had been properly citing a Kinnock speech in his own stump remarks until on one occasion he forgot, thus leading to the "plagiarism" allegation --, the PROBLEM with Biden's use of Kinnock's material was that Biden adopted facts which were simply UNTRUE as to Biden (for example, unlike Kinnock, Biden had no immediate coal miner ancestors AND members of Biden's family had gone to college.) For plagiarism, the better example is Biden's copying of pages of a law review article, without attribution, in a paper he did at Syracuse Law around 1965. Biden got an F and had to re-take the course. He was not expelled. A later review of the incident by the Delaware legal disciplinary authorities did not find that this adversely impacted Biden's ability to practice law in Delaware.

It was the Syracuse incident that led to the famous interchange with "Frank" in 1987:

On a rainy Saturday night in Claremont, New Hampshire, Frank Fahey asked Joe Biden at a campaign event about his academic record. Biden lit into the schoolteacher in what became an infamous gaffe.

"I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do," Biden said.

The incident, broadcast on C-SPAN, was one of various problems that eventually led to the collapse of Biden's campaign.

Frank Fahey apparently now supports Obama/Biden. An interesting question on IQ hierarchy--> What's the relative ranking of Joe Biden, Frank Fahey, and Tom Brokaw?

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 07, 2008 (boomark / email).