Dum Pendebat Filius

I know, it’s old news, but I’ve seen a bit of clarification on Joe Biden’s unfortunate remarks about Barack Obama (see below). See Friday’s Daily Howler for a transcription:

BIDEN: I mean, you’ve got the first, sort of, mainstream African-American –

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

BIDEN: Who is articulate and bright and, and, and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

This is not quite the same thing as calling Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, etc, etc.” In light of the fuller transcript, you can interpret his remark as follows:

1. Barack Obama is the first mainstream African-American presidential candidate.
2. Barack Obama is articulate, bright, clean, etc.

It was still a grotesque lapse of common sense, to be sure; the best thing you can call it is patronizing when a white man praises an African-American man for being “bright” and “articulate.” It’s also very much questionable whether Obama could be considered the first “mainstream” African-American presidential candidate, given Jesse Jackson’s strong performance in the 1988 Democratic primaries.

I think commenter Stram put it best, though, in a wonderful comment he left at The Liberal Avenger:

Biden was ‘toast’ before he was bread. He’s at less than 1%. Move on.