'Cruel on purpose': Americans rage at Times writer who claims Biden grieves his family too much
When President Joe Biden addressed the families of the 13 military members killed in Afghanistan last week he referenced losing his son Beau. It's a reference he frequently makes when addressing people who have lost loved ones and experienced profound grief. In response to the incident, New York Times reporter Peter Baker penned a report about those complaining that Biden grieves too much, and in this incident, it didn't make sense because Biden's son didn't die in combat.
As American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein detailed in a thread that the grief of losing a child is "unfathomable." Biden lost two, one from cancer and one suddenly when he also lost his first wife in a car accident. Ornstein noted that frequently when he met with people who knew he'd lost his son, they'd explain they lost their cat or their 93-year-old mother. He was at first insulted that those could even be compared to the loss of a child.
"Then I realized that people are trying to be understanding and empathetic, and don't know how to react," explained Ornstein. "Of course, the most common is 'There are no words.'"
Losing a child is something few can fully understand, and Biden is one of them, so addressing families who lost their children is at the very least something he can empathize with and he can speak to with extensive experience.
A TIME report from March described a 2020 campaign stop in Ottumwa, Iowa, where a woman told Biden of her 9-year-old daughter's battle with cancer.
"Biden put both of his hands on Jennifer Stormbern's shoulders and whispered a message of comfort to her," the story described. "Her shoulders shook a little as Biden kept his voice low, presumably talking about his late son Beau, who had died four years earlier after a fight with brain cancer. I walked over to Stormbern after and asked her about the exchange. It was clearly an emotional moment for both her and the former Vice President in the hotel ballroom."
"He's a dad. And you never, ever get over a loss like that," she told the TIME reporter. That was one of the reasons she said she was paying attention to Biden because he could bring "decency" back.
That was different last week when families of the fallen soldiers met with Biden at the White House.
"When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son," said Mark Schmitz, a Trump voter whose 20-year-old son Jared was among the dead from the ISIS attack on the Afghan airport. "I'm not trying to insult the president, but it just didn't seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son."
"I think it was all him trying to say he understands grief," Schmitz also said, according to the Washington Post. "But when you're the one responsible for ultimately the way things went down, you kind of feel like that person should own it a little bit more. Our son is now gone. Because of a direct decision or game plan — or lack thereof — that he put in place."
During the 2016 campaign, there were several conversations about the Gold Star families because then-candidate Donald Trump belittled and insulted them. One, in particular, was an 8-day public feud between Trump and a Gold Star father.
After 500,000 deaths from COVID-19, Biden's emotional understanding and acknowledgment of the country's loss was a welcomed change after he was elected. But that is a dramatic difference from being a commander-in-chief who makes the calls that can determine whether soldiers live or die.
"Of course, not everyone is going to react the same way to others who try to comfort and empathize," explained Ornstein. "But there are likely literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have found immense comfort over decades from Joe Biden. That some do not is not a big news story. Every family that loses a child, including especially those who lose their children as they serve their country, deserves empathy and respect. Not everybody is going to react to an expression of sympathy with appreciation, and Biden's way may well offend some."
"But the effort on Fox et al to go after Biden on this, including claiming that he was so insensitive to the loss of the families of Marines that he looked at his watch over and over, is a common tactic-- attack his strength, his empathy, to undermine him," Ornstein concluded. Don't get taken in."
There are a great many things that Fox News and others could attack Biden on involving policy or politics, but attacking the grief he has for the losses he has experienced aren't going over well.
See the comments below:
There is indeed a growing, concerted effort by hardcore partisans to untroop Beau Biden and polarize the way Joe Biden grieves for him; writing about in this unseeing way amounts to collaborating in the project.https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1434516507028082691\u00a0\u2026— southpaw (@southpaw) 1630855090
We elected a human being. Now let Biden just be one! May we all have the strength to keep our loved ones with us by talking about them and to understand that sharing grief is good medicine.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/us/politics/biden-beau-afghanistan.html?referringSource=articleShare\u00a0\u2026— Maya Wiley (@Maya Wiley) 1630851838
I saw my parents bury their son, and console their now fatherless grand-kids. Please show Joe Biden -and every parent who\u2019s lost their child- grace when it comes to that grief. Unless your family has lived it, you don\u2019t know that kind of pain.\n\nIt\u2019s part of him. Like his lungs.— Ana Navarro-C\u00e1rdenas (@Ana Navarro-C\u00e1rdenas) 1630869003
Sometimes you have to wonder why the NYT does what it does. The article about Joe Biden's grief and that some people don't want to hear about it, felt like it was meant to be cruel on purpose.\n\nNot really sure why anyone there thought that was worthy of reporting on.— Anita (@Anita) 1630794327
My beautiful baby boy, my love, has a terminal diagnosis and I have found comfort in the words of Joe Biden and his love and sharing of the grief over the loss of his son, Beau. The pain of being a parent in our situation is the deepest, most brutal pain imaginable. #CureRiaanhttps://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1434546686400073731\u00a0\u2026— Jo Kaur (@Jo Kaur) 1630880353
Also, how much of this is just influenced by partisanship? It seems like those who are bothered by Biden's expressions are Republicans & those who appreciate them are Democrats. So what's the informational value in this?— Mangy Jay (@Mangy Jay) 1630856132
Your @nytimes has profited off \u201cWhen it bleeds it leads\u201d unhealed grief for decades, especially from 9/11/01 thru cheerleading the (unrelated to 9/11) Iraq War to withdrawal from Afghanistan \u2014 but suddenly you\u2019re policing unhealed grief when it\u2019s Joe Biden\u2019s? That\u2019s just gross.https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1434516507028082691\u00a0\u2026— Christine Pelosi (@Christine Pelosi) 1630862558
I have not lost a child so couldn\u2019t figure out why I found these stories about how Biden processes grief so distasteful, shameful in way his sadness is written as mere politics. They don\u2019t acknowledge that we have no idea what it is like. @NormOrnstein has lost a child. Read.https://twitter.com/normornstein/status/1434546679160741891\u00a0\u2026— Juliette Kayyem (@Juliette Kayyem) 1630861109
My mother died in 1986 when I was 17. If you ask me today about her I will tell you the same things, with the same barely diminished grief. Grief isn\u2019t something you adjust based on your audience. It\u2019s something that really doesn\u2019t leave you. I suspect that\u2019s even true for pols.— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid \ud83d\ude37 (@Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid \ud83d\ude37) 1630868234
As a parent who has lost a child I think it\u2019s safe to say we want them remembered. I don\u2019t pretend to understand anyone\u2019s grief. But when faced with a person that has lost a child I talk about my son and the loss to empathize\u2026not compare.— Yo (@Yo) 1630855704
My younger sister died 16+ years ago, and there are still times when the heaviness is almost too much to bear. When you have loved & been loved by family who passes on, you don't have an audience-dependent "approach" for expressing grief. \n\nBiden's human. I thank God for that.https://twitter.com/MarshaStanley03/status/1434629918504022018\u00a0\u2026— Mae B Someday Soon (@Mae B Someday Soon) 1630878405
It should also be noted that President Biden lost his first wife and daughter in an accident years ago, and that there's no statute of limitations on grief, nor are some forms of grief superior to others.https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1434631211968831496\u00a0\u2026— PJ DeGenar\u00f8 will absolutely mess with Texas (@PJ DeGenar\u00f8 will absolutely mess with Texas) 1630880254
There\u2019s absolutely plenty to criticize Biden about, but choosing \u201che relates to other people\u2019s grief through his own experiences with grief\u201d is a really odd and off-putting one.— DemonicEntitiesHat (@DemonicEntitiesHat) 1630878504
The deaths of his two children have shaped Biden into the man he is today. Nobody should be offended that he talks about grief as a way to connect with people who are also experiencing pain.\n\nThese same critics, BTW, were fine with Trump talking about how supposedly rich he was.pic.twitter.com/YTaVqBi832— Russell Drew (@Russell Drew) 1630858120
You have New York Times actually writing trashy articles specifically to criticize President Biden\u2019s continued grief over the loss of his beloved son Beau who served with honor. Having a human being as President doesn\u2019t sell, they want orange rapist and his crimestress Ivanka.— Ricky Davila (@Ricky Davila) 1630856837
The piece refers to *one* father who, for reasons we might not understand, was offended by Biden\u2019s recollections of his own dead son. I\u2019m not sure why that would be considered offensive but the father was (and is) raw from grief. To make it a news story or a tweet is petty.— Lynn R Schrader (@Lynn R Schrader) 1630842442
There are just not enough words to describe how awful, abhorrent, outrageous & offensive the front page of the New York Times is today berating Pres. Biden for somehow showing too much pain & grief over the death of his son, Beau.— Charles Campisi (@Charles Campisi) 1630872984
I really don't want to read anyone's take on whether Biden's display of grief for his lost son is politically efficacious.https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1434516507028082691\u00a0\u2026— Mike Miller, PhD (@Mike Miller, PhD) 1630874117
NYT Obviously is not familiar with profound grief \n lucky them.\n No one wants to be in this club.\nMany former friends and family avoid the survivors afterwards because it makes them uncomfortable. \n I THANK President Biden for showing his empathy towards survivorspic.twitter.com/nG02GCZxCE— Frack Hazard Reveal (@Frack Hazard Reveal) 1630870162
I do wonder that the values of reporters at the paper of record who bash Biden for not adjusting his approach to grief depending on the audience. It's as if to Peter Baker, everything is a performance & nothing is authentic. Grief is such a weird and powerful knife in our gut.https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1434516507028082691\u00a0\u2026— Anne Ward (@Anne Ward) 1630866997
No way to spin the tasteless headline about a grieving person. If grief is a sign of weakness, then society has become robot like. Katie, I hope you don\u2019t ever have to experience loss the way President Biden has experienced it.— Cooper (@Cooper) 1630860997
Republicans find Biden's emotions & stories irritating. Partisan Democrats, like me, find them comforting. You can see this through the quotes in the story. It seems odd to take such an analytic view of reactions to grief, as if they are neutral, when, in this case, they're not— Mangy Jay (@Mangy Jay) 1630876019
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