By Andrea Widburg
The older you get, the harder travel can be on your body. You tire more easily, your joints hurt and, if you’re unlucky, your digestion goes all flipsy-wopsy. Joe Biden is just a few days away from turning 79, which is a respectable age for anyone, especially someone who seems to be decomposing while still alive. Perhaps it’s not surprising, given his age and decrepitude, that Biden’s bowels apparently were a problem during his recent trip abroad. His having an accident while visiting with the Pope lives in the realm of rumor but it’s pretty certain he let loose with a long, melodious fart while talking to Camilla Parker Bowles.
We know that Biden lost control because it appears that the Duchess of Cornwall, rather than considering the subject to be beneath her notice, can’t stop talking about it:
He is supposed to be committed to reducing emissions – but when President Joe Biden produced a little natural gas of his own at the COP26 summit, it was audible enough to make the Duchess of Cornwall blush.
An informed source has told The Mail on Sunday that Camilla was taken aback to hear Biden break wind as they made polite small talk at the global climate change gathering in Glasgow last week.
‘It was long and loud and impossible to ignore,’ the source said. ‘Camilla hasn’t stopped talking about it.’
And while I cannot reproduce it because of copyright issues, I can tell you that the Daily Mail found the perfect photograph to illustrate the story. Joe Biden stands facing the photographer with the Duchess on his left and Liz Truss on his right. Both women are in profile. On Biden’s face is the exact same expression you’ve seen on your babies’ faces after they filled their diapers and are now feeling a tremendous sense of relief. Meanwhile, despite being in profile, Camilla’s face shows both shock and repulsion while Truss looks as if she’s holding her breath.
The Daily Mail helpfully reminds readers that, back when he was a youthful 77-years-old, Biden appeared to have passed gas while having a live-stream conversation with Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf:
And of course, a week ago, there was a rumor going around Rome that Biden had soiled himself during a meeting with Pope Francis. Peter McArdle noted that the rumor found some confirmation in the fact that the Vatican did not provide live footage of the meeting, that the meeting ran unusually long, and that Biden may have been wearing a different suit after the meeting than he wore when he arrived.
I had thought to fill this post with puns and double entendres about bowel movements and related activity but I’m not an inveterate punster and the whole post would have ended up being rather crude and silly. I didn’t want to be silly because I think these stories are actually rather serious.
The reality is that human bodies are busy things that excrete lots of stuff all the time. Again, anyone who has ever been around babies and small children knows that one spends a lot of time cleaning up after all that stuff. However, as we grow older, we’re expected to bring our bodies under control. It’s only when we’re very old or very sick that we start reverting to our infantile body habits.
That’s why it matters that, when Biden went abroad, people outside of America gossiped about three things: (1) the rumor that he pooped at the Pope’s; (2) the fact that he fell asleep during the climate conference; and (3) the fact that he farted long and loud in the presence of the Duchess of Cornwall. Combine that with the nonsense that so often emerges whenever Biden opens his mouth, the weird whispers into the microphone, and his flashes of fury at reporters (including friendlies), and the message that the Europeans are getting is clear: The person sitting at the top of the American government is a man in his dotage who is reverting to infantile physical habits.
And of course, it’s not just the Europeans, who ostensibly are our allies. Our enemies, whether in Beijing or Tehran, are getting the same message.
In the old days in Europe, when leadership was hereditary, the most frightening thing that could happen to a nation was to have an infant or an imbecile on the throne (whether the imbecility was from inbreeding or advanced age). With Joe Biden at America’s helm, we are now discovering just how right the Europeans were to fear such a situation.
(Today, my pronouns are “Hold it in, Brandon!” and “Whatever you do, don’t breathe through your nose.” What are your pronouns?)