I remember David Letterman, decades ago, asking a multiple-choice question on his late-night NBC talk show (back when he was still funny, before the whole Carson-Leno deal embittered him and he moved to CBS).
The question went something like this: If Gary Coleman and Emmanuel Lewis fought each other with pool cues on live television, who would win? A: Gary Coleman. B: Emmanuel Lewis. C: The television viewing public.
The references are dated, of course (I’m pretty sure the show I’m remembering was broadcast in the 80s), but you could substitute any other two well-known annoying people — Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, say, or Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu — and you’d have the same setup.
The point is, I often think back to Letterman’s joke when two people get into some sort of public dustup but I’m disinclined to root for either side.
That’s the position I found myself in this week when Clare Daly, a member of the European Parliament from Ireland and an avowed socialist, laid into President Joe Biden during a speech on Tuesday.
“Despite the catastrophic death toll it has inflicted, Israel is losing on the ground and in the court of public opinion,” she claimed during a plenary session of parliament in Strasbourg, France. (I’ve described it as a plenary session because that’s what both Newsweek and the U.K.’s Independent reported, but there sure seemed to be an awful lot of empty seats in the video both outlets posted.)
When someone is losing in the court of public opinion, it doesn’t generally need to be pointed out, but she doubled down on her wishful thinking anyway.
“There’s no way that this ends that doesn’t leave Israel a pariah state with occupation and apartheid on borrowed time,” she continued.
Essentially, her argument was that Israel was suffering from the consequences of its own actions — as opposed to the actions of several hundred radical Islamic terrorists from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 — and was desperate to escalate the conflict to manipulate the U.S. into intervening.
Is Biden hurting America’s image around the world?
“And as Yemen shows,” she said, “Butcher Biden is reporting for duty.”
I have to assume she was referring to the president and not, say, his son, Hunter Biden. Hunter has his own issues, but I don’t think anyone has ever described him as a butcher before.
“So take note, Butcher Biden,” she added later. “The ancestors of the Ireland that you claim to be from disown you. Keep your country out of your mouth.”
How Daly knew what Biden’s Irish ancestors have been thinking, she didn’t state. Even if she explained it, given that she also claimed to represent “the people of Europe,” I don’t know that anyone would have believed her anyway.
So here I am, trying to pick a side, which normally would be whoever is criticizing our president, since I disagree with his positions and policies far more often than otherwise. In this case, however, I have a rant from a European socialist of questionable lucidity taking Biden on for his support of Israel, one of those few policies on which I agree with the man.
What to do, what to do. It seems to me like another Letterman moment.
If Clare Daly and Joe Biden get into a row over Middle East policy, who wins? Everyone? Or maybe no one?
I’m going to let you answer that one for yourself. But let’s keep these two away from the pool cues.
