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So, remember my big thread last week about that weird 1973 Biden speech? There was one line in it I didn't mention at the time that's been rattling around my head since yesterday.
That line, which I'll get to in a minute, has been rattling around in my head because of a different line from a speech Biden gave to big-money donors last night, about his friendship with the vicious white supremacist senator James Eastland.
Waxing nostalgic about his early days in the Senate last night, Biden said that Senator Eastland, a plantation owner, union-buster, and virulent opponent of race-mixing, "never called me ‘boy.’ He always called me ‘son.’”
This line has prompted many questions.
The Washington Post this morning illuminates the issue a bit: It turns out that Eastland has used this line before. washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06…
But in the past, Biden's habit has been to tell the story a bit differently, and less perplexingly: Eastland, Biden said in a 2017 speech in Alabama, "never called me 'senator.' He called me 'son.'" jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/may/…
That makes a lot more sense, right? Good ol' boy Mississippi Senator takes Delaware kid under his wing, calls him "son." Cute, if you set aside the white supremacy.
The thing is, though, Eastland didn't call Biden "son." He called him—wait for it—"boy."
When I livetweeted that 1973 speech, one of the cringeworthy lines I quoted was this one: "I think the two party system is good for the South, and good for the Negro and good for the black in the South."
That line came in answer to a question about whether Southern senators' attitudes on race were evolving, and what Biden's relationship with those senators was. Here's his answer in full.
"I have had a number of conversations with the Southern senators. We get about forty to fifty requests a week to speak nationally ... and the places that we go, the places I've told my staff I want to go, by and large, is the South, because I'm most unfamiliar with the South..."
"...I've had the chance to speak in the South fairly frequently, and speak with the Southern senators. I think there is a change. They have leaders in the Senate, and leaders in the South like Fritz Hollings from South Carolina ... guys like Lawton Chiles..."
"...and you have Republicans alike coming up, it's not confined to a party. I think the two-party system, although my Democratic colleagues don't like me saying this, I think the two-party system is good for the South and good for the Negro. Good for the black..."
"...in the South. And other than the fact that they still call me 'boy,' I think they've changed their minds."
That last bit was one of the biggest laughter and applause lines in the speech.
So Biden's been using variations on the "Southern segregationist senators don't call me 'Senator,' they call me 'boy' line since he first got to the Senate. One suspects that he switched over to 'son' as a concession to the fraught racial politics of the word 'boy.'
But last night he got the two versions tangled up, and it became "they didn't call me 'boy,' they called me 'son.'"
(Note: There's a tweet up near the top of this thread where I say "Eastland has used this line before." It should read "Biden has used this line before." Oops.)
