I am thinking of a few other things.

Robert Hur, special counsel, reports that Joe Biden comes across as an elderly man with memory problems, and everyone gets so upset. How can he say such a thing? Why would he say such a thing? Why did he throw it in his report?

Now, we realize that he was probably correct. And he probably thought that his impression was important to convey.

But his job was to gather facts. Was it also to give his opinion?

George Stephanopoulos interviews Biden for ABC-TV. I didn’t see the interview, but George S. gets  good reviews as a fair interviewer. The reaction to Biden’s condition after the interview is mixed, or so it appears.

George S. goes to the gym. He is walking home and a stranger recognizes him, approaches him and asks him the question, basically saying “You are the one who should know. Is he fit?” George S says “no”.

George is embarrassed. He realizes that itcwas a mistake for him to have responded. He is a jounalist. Reporting the facts. Not giving his opinion.

But was it a mistake? Biden’s capacity is crucially important, is it not? And because it is so important,  perhaps it is equally appropriate that a journalist and a lawyer violate standard norms to tell us what we need to know.

Let’s move to another topic. Did you see where a Black man, I think in Michigan, applied for a job at a hotel using his given name and was not even granted an interview.  He then turned around and submitted the same information to the same hotel in a second application,  this time using a fake Polish-y name, and was asked to come in for an interview.

Surprised? Of course not. This is why so many Jews changed their names in the first half of the twentieth century.  And now that universities cannot use racial preferences and so many companies feel it safer (or better) to drop diversity programs, maybe Blacks will have to start doing the same. All of those Afrocentric first names, those names starting with a sonorous but unnecessary “De…”, and all those Biblical names that sound all right, but Whites don’t use? Maybe they will begin to vanish.

Oh, and Maine? Here goes:

We leave this morning. Tonight? Hopefully, New Bedford, Mass.