Friday, June 14, 2024

A deft kindness

This incident is striking and concerning on several levels and of course has generated a storm of accusations and defense.  Holding the issue of dementia aside, I was struck by something different than Biden's behavior.
When Giorgia Meloni became Prime Minister of Italy a year and a half ago, the legacy mainstream media went all in with accusations of fascism and inhumanity.  She was evil personified, were you to believe the establishment media.  It was, of course, all nonsense.

Her policies were not Woke, but they were still very much in the mainstream.  Not only popular with the electorate now but very consistent with policies accepted as mainstream from the seventies into the noughts.  But because she was not hard left, in the eyes of the Mandarin Class, the glitterati and the legacy mainstream media, she was evil and therefore kissing cousin with fascists and Nazis.

It was such an absurd set of charges that it finally began to lose steam after a few months.  There simply was no substance to the accusations and people could see that.  In addition, Meloni held her ground with a series of hard hitting and effective speeches.  The MSM finally simpered away.

Rugg, I think, exaggerates in his tweet with "grabbing." He is scoring an opportunistic political point but I think a neutral observer would describe this incident differently.

There are nine other adults in the group, most of whom quickly notice Biden's distraction.  They begin a side shuffle to close up the ranks but they do nothing more.  It is Meloni on the far left of the frame who almost immediately notices Biden moving away.  She hesitates a few seconds.  I assume she was waiting for others much closer to him to address the situation.  They don't.  

Meloni then crosses the front of the group, ostensibly to talk to Macron and Van der Leyen (who were standing contiguous to the left of Biden.)  Meloni tactically positions herself with her back to the cameras as if talking with Macron and Van der Leyen but then takes a couple of further steps to the right to touch Biden's arm and deferentially, tactfully, as unobtrusively as possible, gets his attention focused back where he needs to be.  Biden returns and takes his place as the rest of the leaders reposition themselves back around him.

One of only two women among the ten.  The shortest of all the leaders.  Yet she was the one most able to demonstrate a deft kindness, protecting another from his own actions.  I was very impressed to see such touching humanity in a politician.

Either she is natural mensch or she has had experience in dealing with the very elderly.  In any case, I do not think any argument or speech on her part could be a clearer refutation of all the baseless accusations made against her.


UPDATE:  I see this data after posting.  Maybe just a coincidence that Meloni gets the best of the bad ratings.  

 

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