Stay out of Scranton.
You heard me.
Joe Biden is running for the Democratic nomination for president and it’s only a matter of time until the national press corps hauls its fawning platitudes to the Northeastern Pennsylvania city of Biden’s birth where I live.
We already have enough problems.
The FBI recently raided City Hall and the mayor’s house. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has already made two arrests and continues to investigate the Scranton School District. Shapiro also already brought charges against male Lackawanna County Prison guards accused of operating a female inmate sex slave ring at the fortress-like dungeon located in, where else but Scranton, the county seat.
You want “The Office,” a hip comedy supposedly set in Scranton and embraced by Scrantonians but filmed in an LA warehouse starring carpetbagger actors, watch re-runs.
Ever since the coal mines closed, too many Scrantonians have difficulty finding a suitable identity. They suffer from political tribalism and ethnic cultural depravation. That’s why they cheer Biden, who left town at age ten.
Back when I worked as a Northeastern Pennsylvania news radio talk show host I once banned Biden from visiting his hometown. Of course I had no power to enforce my edict but I wanted the world to know Biden was a phony and he should stay in Delaware or anywhere other than Scranton – where every day is Paddy’s Day and all the drinks are free. OK, that’s a tall tale I made up but Biden adding to our grand myth will hurt us far more than help us.
When Biden ran with Barack Obama in 2008 I publicly challenged his claim that he had family members who worked in the coal mines. Biden’s great-grandfather was a pampered lace curtain state senator. The more I pushed the campaign for details the more I realized Biden made up his labor roots to try to manipulate those of us whose family members did work – and sometimes die – in coal mines. After 45 years working in dark Scranton hell holes, my Irish immigrant grandfather finally succumbed to black lung disease.
The campaign finally admitted Biden “might have misspoken.”
No, Biden lied.
But because too many native Scrantonians harbor delusion deeper than the deepest hard coal mine beneath the city, they bought his act hook, lie and pickax. They call him “Uncle Joe,” according to national press accounts, even though I’ve never heard anybody call him by that moniker. Even Obama fell victim to that “scrappy kid from Scranton,” malarkey, (one of Biden’s favorite words) a label Obama stuck to Biden, who in reality is a slap-happy self-promoting hustler who on cue leaps into what the old Gaelic-speaking greenhorn immigrants like my grandfather used to call “stage Irish” giddiness.
Every year when Paddy’s Day rolls around, Biden slips into a soft nostalgia thick as Galway creamery butter when he speaks of his hometown where natives who never visited Ireland easily drift into a Connemara brogue. Ah, sure, our Joey is quite the lad in the minds of those who love him – especially the 1,400 or so pale white men including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, federal judges and other such bigoted louts who meet for a gala Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick ham and cabbage celebration that bans women – including all female political candidates – and have done so for more than century. Biden has addressed this segregationist gaggle of walking Irish-American stereotypes as feature speaker three times, more than any speaker, including the late Bobby Kennedy.
But don’t take my word for the sure-and-begorrah phoniness Biden offers white ethnic Irish America and plays better than anybody. Ask Jimmy Pliska, one of those hard-working white, blue-collar Northeastern Pennsylvania voters who is not cheering Biden’s entry into the race. Pliska, after a personal run-in with Biden, is one of the best examples of conservative reactionary anti-liberal militant hatred in America. Pound-for-pound and more than anybody on the planet, Pliska hates Biden, Democrats and anybody who even remotely likes Biden. Jimmy likes me, though, even though I’m one of those detested left-leaning Dems.
Jimmy likes me because I stood up for him when he, too, was a hard-core, die-hard, card-carrying Democrat and Biden tried to make a fool out of him in his own kitchen. I know because I was there.
Biden visited Jimmy’s house in Duryea, about 10 miles south of Scranton when the 2011 flood slammed into Jimmy’s town. I was working the radio then and first spotted Jimmy crying uncontrollably at the scene of the storm. I wound up by happenstance the next day in his wrecked kitchen the day the vice president stopped by.
Jimmy had earlier told me he couldn’t rebuild. No way could or would he put his family through such a stressful ordeal. They rebuilt once after a previous flood. Once was enough. Then came Biden with big teeth and his sleeves rolled up and a pompous ill-informed staff of Washington bureaucrats trailing along like slobbering pedigree puppies. We’re going to rebuild, Biden announced to everybody in the battered kitchen. Picking up a photograph Jimmy had earlier shown me, Biden wanted to know who was in the picture. Jimmy said the photo showed his father and grandfather, proud men who helped turn Jimmy into the man he is today. Yes, we’ll rebuild, said Biden.
Jimmy looked like he might pass out. Tears welled in his eyes. I looked around for help. Biden pressed.
He demanded to know if the men in the photo would give up.
“No,” Jimmy whispered. “No.”
Biden refused to budge, doubling down like he was personally going to throw on the work boots and dig mud with Jimmy to get the house back into shape. Jimmy had already decided the biggest, toughest decision in his life, to not rebuild, but Biden kept pushing, kept smiling, kept running his unruly Biden yap in a way neither Jimmy nor I will ever forgive.
I wanted to punch the vice president. I also didn’t want to lose my job, get arrested and create an international incident. So I didn’t even call Biden out for failing to do his homework and disrespecting a good man in his own home struggling to pick up the pieces.
Smug and pleased with himself, Biden finished up his routine and walked to the back of the house to answer questions from the press. I glared from a dark corner.
“You can smile, Dr. Death,” Biden said, looking at me with his goofy happy face.
The flood had already claimed one life and any kind of death joke fell flat. I wasn’t in the mood to play with Biden and left through a side door. Walking down the street, I waited for Biden’s next inappropriate comedy skit.
I didn’t have long to wait.
When Biden emerged from Jimmy’s house he shook hands all around, connecting in that supposedly regular guy way too many people believe he does best. All he did was throw bullshit at anybody willing to wear the stain. At the end of a decimated block, Biden reached out and lifted a little boy standing nearby. Holding him, Biden listened and seemed thrilled when the child leaned in and said something. Biden asked the boy to repeat for the press and assembled crowd what he had shared.
The kid asked Biden if he would rebuild his grandma’s house. Of course, Biden said. Of course he would rebuild grandma’s house. Absolutely.
Make sure to talk to Jimmy Pliska if you come to town. He’ll tell you the same story. He’ll probably offer to show you the house – or at least where the house once stood. A short time after Biden left never to return, a demolition crew leveled grandma’s house.
I have no idea where that child is today – maybe heading up a white militia Trump re-election campaign office somewhere in the wilds of hard coal country.
So stay out of Scranton if you want to sing Biden’s praises.
We already have all the blowhards we can handle without fawning members of the press and the man who never quit wanting to be president, what the old Scranton Irish call an “amadon,” an idiot political prince of the highest order.