Joe Biden collects eulogies like I used to collect Pokémon cards. He has turned memorializing friends and loved ones into a passionate hobby.
After Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in early 2023, Biden claimed the former president had asked him to deliver the keynote speech at his funeral. He casually let the secret request slip during a speech to a small group of donors at a DNC fundraiser. “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that,” Biden blurted after making the claim.
What bizarre behavior. Who brags about being asked to headline at a funeral? Then again, this is Joe Biden we’re talking about. I shouldn’t be surprised.
Biden has bragged about his home state of Delaware (as opposed to his home state of Pennsylvania) once being a slave state. He flagrantly told a room full of reporters he had the highest IQ of any of them and graduated at the top of his class, even though that wasn’t true. He openly boasted of influencing state investigations into his son’s involvement in a Ukrainian gas company.
What Biden chooses to parade in conversation is far from conventional. However, I can almost understand wanting to casually reveal one’s getting away with running an international money laundering scheme by dressing it up as a mastery of foreign relations. Gleefully sharing that you’ve been chosen to speak at President Carter’s funeral nearly two full years before he sheds his mortal coil? That’s nothing short of macabre.
Jimmy Carter’s funeral will not be Biden’s first eulogical rodeo. His cemeterial credits include warmly remembering the likes of segregationist Strom Thurmond, Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd, and career criminal George Floyd. He’s eulogized John McCain, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, Ethel Kennedy, and more.
The regularity of his funerial appearances hasn’t gone unnoticed by Biden himself. “Never make a good eulogy. You’ll be asked again and again and again,” he quipped mid-eulogy at Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s service.
I recognize that being asked to speak at funerals comes with the territory as a well-known politician. Whose family wouldn’t want one of the world’s most powerful, albeit feeble-minded men paying tribute to their dearly departed?
But, at some point, isn’t enough enough? Joe Biden is no stranger to grief. In fact, that’s another thing he is want to bring up at any given chance. Whether it’s his first wife and daughter in a car accident or his son, Beau, suffering from cancer, Joe is quick to remind the world that he has endured painful losses throughout his life. Wouldn’t Biden want to put some distance between himself and the Grim Reaper instead of being the following act?
This can’t be healthy for a man whose own mortality is visibly fading. I’m reminded of Uncle Junior from The Sopranos. Corrado “Junior” Soprano is placed under house arrest as he awaits trial. But he soon discovers a loophole: he’s allowed to leave the house to attend funerals. Uncle Junior soon makes it a habit of scanning the obituary page, searching for a relation – no matter how distant – he could exploit to escape his confinement. Corrado is visibly joyful at wakes, funerals, and repasts. “The chicken’s nice and spicy, huh?” he remarks in the home of a family who just lost their pre-teen son.
But before long, it begins to settle in Corrado Soprano’s mind that he is not long for this world, either. He eventually breaks down at one of the wakes he found himself attending for solace. “Awh, this f—in’ s—t! What’s the point? I can’t take it anymore,” he yells between sobs before being escorted out of the funeral parlor.
I wonder when Uncle Joe will have his Uncle Junior epiphany. Or will his immense braggadocios ego prevent him from having that moment of clarity? I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. And I’m also willing to bet that in this day and age of AI, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities Biden will be delivering his own eulogy.