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Democratic Primaries

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UncleNoel

(864 posts)
Thu Mar 19, 2020, 09:23 AM Mar 2020

Op-Ed: What others see as Joe Biden's mental slips, I see as the tricks of a master stutterer [View all]


You don’t notice Joe Biden’s stutter when he’s speaking most of the time. He didn't stutter during Sunday night’s debate, for example. But as a stutterer, I recognized the fingerprints of a master stutterer at work.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/op-ed-others-see-joe-100045858.html

Seeing Biden on stage takes me back to my childhood. I've watched him for years and recognize the familiar tricks. Noticed him struggling with a phrase or name he's uttered a million times before.

I've heard him use overly complicated or quirky phrasing and immediately recognized the method of a master stutterer: the almost savant-like ability to rephrase a thought or paragraph, on-the-fly, to avoid a problematic word or syllable.

I've listened to his critics and heard echoes of my past. He's senile, they insist. He forgot Obama's name. He's mentally defective. Dementia. But I know better.

At a campaign stop on March 5, Biden "forgot" Obama's name, identifying him simply as "the last guy." At other events he’s said, "President my boss." Some see this as evidence of a man losing his mental faculties. I see the familiar trick of calling a last-second audible for an easier syllable or phrase, the in-the-moment wordplay stutterers use to navigate their speech.

Stuttering is fickle. A word might come naturally the first million times, then get stuck without warning. So we make substitutions. Sometimes it's nicknames. Sometimes it's slang that sounds awkward or out-of-place, like Biden uses.


More at link

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
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