Courting The Black Vote - Joe Biden Goes Deep Ghetto And It Turns Out Very, Very Bad

Bill Clinton fancied himself as the first black president, so attuned was he to the manners, mores, frustrations, and ambitions of the black community.  He liked jawing with them on the porch of the saloon and in tarpaper shacks in Edmonds, about fifty miles from Little Rock - a hot, miserable place, but where his people - the real people of Arkansas were from. 

 

Bill talked totin' and haulin' like no white man black folk had ever seen.  He could shuck and jive like the best of them, left his white hob-knobbing self behind, and just sat and drank with his friends. 

Obama of course was the first real black president, but in many ways he was far less so than Bill.  He clipped his speech, thought before he spoke, couched everything in Chicagoese and talked like a professor.  The black folk were happy that one of theirs - or at least a half one of theirs - was in the White House, but they always thought first of Bill. 

Joe Biden had black envy - he loved black cool and black men's sheer irresponsibility, sleeping with ten women at a time, never worrying about anything back home nor the slew of babies left behind. They sat on front stoops, got drunk on malt liquor and smoked weed, had a cackling good time, whistling at the fine black cooch that walked by.  

Ah, that was the life, Joe thought, not his buttoned-up, careful Catholic white thing.  If only I were black, he mused....but his reverie was broken by Jill, his wife of decades, a skinny, bony thing, unlike those fine black high-shelved, big-booty women in Anacostia he wanted. 

 

For years, but especially since he was elected President, Joe Biden wished he could channel Bill Clinton, get down with the black community and be one of them. In fact he had always wanted to be blacker than Clinton, a tall order, for the former President had done everything except blacken his skin and curl his hair to become the first black president.   He loved fried chicken, collard greens, and the blues.  He loved hanging out with black men on the stoop, sharing stories about poontang and moonshine

Joe wanted to walk, talk, and act as black as the men whom he secretly admired.  He was no Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas fan.  They had been laundered, bleached, and whitened beyond recognition.  If you shut your eyes when they spoke, you would swear that they were white.  No, he wanted the true black experience, but didn’t know how to get it.  

He wanted to be ghetto, down with the street, a pimp-walking, pimped out, gold-grilled stone cool black dude, but that hope seemed vain and impossible.  He was doomed to be the white man that everyone hated, locked into a plaster-of-Paris cast, stiff, without joy or rhythm and fated to forever to have dry, soulless sex. 

Oh, to be black, he dreamed.   He wanted to sit, drink malt liquor, and smoke Kools with his bro's in West Baltimore, talk black talk, street talk, real talk; but he never could manage, and his barmy, goofy hitched smile never worked there.  He would always be whitey in a serge suit, coming downtown for votes.

'Time to get up', Jill said. 'Not a day to be a slugabed'.  Jill was always there, his personal alarm clock, caretaker, and personal assistant.  Frankly he was tired of her, but he knew enough economics to understand the concept of sunken costs,  Didn’t have to be Milton Friedman to understand that; and he was getting too old to fool around although that was the perk of presidents.  The irony of it all was that now that he was in the Oval Office and could have any woman he wanted, he was too fucking old to do anything about it. 

'It's election time, Joe', Jill said with that irritating way she had when she knew she was right.  Of course he knew it was election time, bitch; and he hated the routine - propped up before a microphone, squinting at the teleprompter, smiling when told, banging his fist when it said 'Bang Fist', and just going through the motions.  If truth be known, he had had enough of it all, and dreamt of the day when he could sit in a chaise lounge in his Wilmington garden, 

He brightened when the thought of menu du jour Today was his long-awaited trip to Anacostia, Washington's deep ghetto.  The polls showed that he was falling behind with the traditionally Democratic black electorate, and he was advised to do something about it.  

He thought the quick commencement appearance at Morehouse would do the trick, show the flag and his solidarity with the black cause, but it all backfired, and he was pilloried in the press for pandering, talking victimhood, white racism, discrimination blah-blah all of which the students wanted none of. In fact they were pissed off that they were once again being talked down to, taken advantage of, and used by this old white guy. 

So with his White House retinue and invited members of the press, he crossed the river into Anacostia, deep into the heart of the DC inner city to the ghetto of all ghettoes, the only completely black place in the capital.

As his limousine wound its way through Anacostia, past shambled row houses, trash, and burned out, abandoned vehicles, he said to his wife, “I didn’t know it would be like this”.  Nothing in his sheltered, insular, white life had prepared him for such a sight.  Ordinarily, he would have stepped out in a crowd to get votes, but this was different.  Even with the extra security added to be on the safe side, he didn't want to leave the car - a 'Never Get Out Of The Boat' moment.

 

When he arrived at the Mt. Zion AME Church of Anacostia and was safely installed behind the pulpit, he felt righteous. 'Bill Clinton has got nothing on me', he thought as he looked out over the packed congregation, but these were not his black people.  The men all looked like undertakers and the women silly in their Carmen Miranda hats.  His people were outside on the stoops smoking Kools.  'That's where I'll go', he said to his chief aide who blanched at the suggestion.  It was bad enough keeping the old man on program in the White House, but here anything could happen. 

'Get the fuck outta here', shouted Pharoah Williams, finishing the last of his Colt 45 and tossing the can into the street sending it clattering under the President's limo. 

This was not what the President had expected, not by a long shot.  Why, he had not even gotten two steps up the stoop, so he gave Pharoah and his buddies the Biden smile, waved, and went back in the car with Jill who had stayed inside and said, 'You're the one looking for votes, not me.  I'm not going out there'. 

So the presidential motorcade turned around and headed back up Alabama Avenue.  Not one black face lined the route, not one cheering supporter, nada, just more black men on stoops, trash in the gutter, and shouts from upstairs windows. 

'I'm a goner', the President said to his wife who after what she saw and heard could offer little solace. 'They'll vote for you, Joe', she said. 'Don't worry. The ghetto has always gone Democrat' and so with that they crossed the river back to white Washington, 

The President gave a sigh of relief, but not without a note of sadness.  His hope of becoming a real black man had been dashed in one, short moment.  'So be it', the President said to himself. 'Fuck 'em',