Don’t Run Again, Joe – Greetings from Scranton

Caricature of Joe Biden by Donkey Hotey via Wikimedia Commons. Use by Gonzo Today does not necessarily endorse the opinions of the artist.

by Steve Corbett – Gonzo Today Contributor

Who’s Joe Biden think he is hanging out at the G7 meeting in Austria like some cocksure Otto von Habsburg in a starched open-necked white shirt, rolling up his sleeves like a working-class plumber on the job, flashing phony white bigger-than-Chiclet capped teeth and wondering when he’ll have to pee? 

Biden’s Father Time, not Baby New Year. 

Getting old’s a bitch, kids. 

And Biden’s youthful Corvette Stingray days are over. 

Our old-timer president who turns 80 in November will always love that snot-green 1967 Chevy (as he told us God knows how many times), giving America a sickadelic flashback worse than any LSD 25 trip acid artisan Owsley ever produced in a hot summer of love laboratory. 

So beware, kiddos. 

If Biden makes a re-election charge, you’re in deep doo doo, as the late Republican fighter pilot president George H. W. Bush put it. Take it from me, countercultural tribal elder, Americans of all ages are already drowning in crotchety public policy sewage more suited to an outhouse than the White House. 

Yeah, I know. 

OK, Boomer. 

But you better beware, Junior. 

At 71 I’m playing in the last quarter and the clock’s ticking. You youngsters are tied to the tracks and waiting to see if that light at the end of the tunnel is a gleaming last chance at liberty and justice or a runaway freight train packed with global catastrophe headed your way. 

My generation lost the revolution. 

Yours might lose the planet. 

I’m a Democrat who voted for Biden because I despise Trump and his national sickness. Trump makes Richard Nixon look like Mr. Rogers. But, even on a good day, Biden might think he really is Mr. Rogers. 

I also trust Biden’s judgement as much as I trust liverwurst to serve as a vegan alternative. 

The one time I interviewed then U.S. Senator Biden on the phone he fibbed through his hair plugs about how he listened to my radio show to remind him of his Scranton birthplace when he worked late at the office. 

Until that call Biden had never heard of me. 

The one time I stood close enough to Biden to check his bald spot for dandruff he stumbled and bumbled, shaming a local Northeastern Pennsylvania mechanic who worked on my Jeep and who lost his family homestead in the 2011 flood. After rebuilding once years before, the man couldn’t bring himself to again reassemble his house.  

I fumed as Biden’s staffers tugged at the sleeve of my fatigue jacket to get me away from the then vice president. Biden insinuated the crying man was a quitter and later called me “Dr. Death,” telling me it was OK to smile. I bit my lip so hard to behave I almost drew blood. 

Now Biden won’t talk to me – or you. 

White House press aides refuse to answer my regular emails requesting a brief interview even though I am the official Gonzo Today White House correspondent and share a hometown with “our Joe,” as local political lapdogs call him here in Scranton. 

I voted for Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren in the Pennsylvania primary because she persisted. Yeah, she’s old too, but at 73 she’s still sharp, far sharper than too many self-absorbed millennial or Gen XYZ hipsters will ever be. 

I want Warren to team up with Bronx, New York, Puerto Rican soul sister Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who turns 35 in October 2024 and becomes legally eligible to serve as president or vice president) to legally storm the White House, taking over government reins to steer our nation back from the Armageddon of the abyss. 

Two women. 

One white. 

One brown. 

Both smart. 

As for Bernie Sanders, he’s the hippie kid who hid the joints in your father’s sport coat the drug dog found when cops stopped your pops for speeding. Bernie says he’s not interested in running for president again. He’s still not a Democrat and can get behind Warren and AOC early, maybe putting in a good word for himself to serve as Secretary of Cannabis. Bernie, Liz and AOC – a marriage made in heaven, a revolutionary union of like-minded rabble-rousers I call “wedibles.” 

Biden doesn’t even drink so we can’t blame his increasing public delirium on alcohol. Yet, we just might find him sober and lost on the 2024 ballot if nobody can soon persuade him not to run. 

Let me try. 

Don’t run. 

How’s that? 

Don’t run. 

Instead of getting wet raspberries blown at you during political rallies from frustrated left-wing Democrats and fiery, young activists, stay home with your caregiver Jill and binge eat Tutti Frutti ice cream. 

Learn to ride a bike. 

Get high. 

Medical marijuana can be fun. 

America needs a president to lead the way to cure COVID, fight climate change, legalize abortion for any reason, open the borders, defund militarized, crooked and cowardly cops, cancel student debt, expand the Supreme Court, destroy the filibuster, defund the Pentagon and reduce billions of dollars for the warmonger military industrial complex. 

If I forgot any other vital public policy, call AOC’s office and ask for more ideas. 

One more thing, President Biden: Make sure your weird wayward son Hunter doesn’t have access to your credit card. I hear he’s living in Malibu while under federal investigation and might be hankering to pick up a groovy, vintage, booger-green Corvette. 

After 18 months in office, our “scrappy kid from Scranton,” as Barack Obama often called Biden, is still walking around in dark aviator shades like a geriatric “No Fun Top Gun” wondering what’s wrong with hugging all the multi-cultured secretaries at the United Nations as a show of international friendship and empathy. 

Obama is superbly super fly rich and knows scrappy when he sees it.  I’ll never forget Biden characterizing Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” 

Voters of color should always remember Biden’s white fractured fairytale. 

Man

So, in the end what did Scranton residents get for sending a native son to the height of democracy? 

We got Biden Street, a city boulevard of bullshit cobbled together by opportunistic elected officials. Flunky fawners cut the ribbon to ingratiate themselves to a sappy, world-class, bourgeois bureaucrat and pave the way for their own political and business aspirations. 

Let’s call it a career, Joe. 

Retire to your Delaware beach house. 

We have enough trouble on Scranton’s potholed uneasy streets without you coming “home,” as you like to say during your sporadic visits, making hard times in a hard town worse instead of better. 

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About Steve Corbett 22 Articles
Steve Corbett is a decades-long state and national award-winning newspaper columnist, radical radio talk show host and novelist. He continues to fight the system as an outlaw journalist and refuses to bow to the evil status quo establishment. Corbett lives in Scranton, PA, and raises hell wherever he goes. He can be reached at theoutlawcorbett.com