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.
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![](https://i.postimg.cc/ZqdGfwM9/Biden.png)