quote:

SHOCKING stuff for tabloids.

And the distance between tabloids and NYT or WaPo seems a lot shorter than it used to be…

Consolidated corporate ownership of media has blurred the line between news stories and editorials.

Yes.

This was a column (by Dowd), not an editorial and not a news story. No blurring here. It's clearly the view of the column writer. Reasonable people can differ on whether this was an appropriate subject appropriately handled, or a tabloid-quality waste of NY Times space.

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel:
Hunter Biden has a low moral character. I can say this based on three scandals known to the public. I won't name them because anyone can follow the news. We should stop being reactionary in defending him and his father.

I don't mean "we" at WTF. I mean we Democrats.

Are there a lot of Democrats who defend Hunter Biden?

I’m not sure there are many Democrats who care about Hunter Biden at all.

I certainly don’t.

I can’t think of anyone who cares about him.

I feel sorry for Joe, the crackhead son survived and the veteran/lawyer/up-and-coming politician son died.

As she framed the story, the Bidens look pretty bad, but I'm not sure I trust Maureen Dowd to present the full picture.

That said, when the full picture involves shunning a child, it's hard for me to come up with a scenario that excuses the people doing the shunning. I presume that Dowd is correct when she says that it has been confirmed that Hunter Biden is her father. If she is not, and the Bidens have reason to believe that they are being shaken down by some woman Hunter had sex with once, well, that's different. Hunter has apparently had sex with a lot of women. If I were his mother, I'd ask for a paternity test. If it said Hunter was the father, then I would do everything I could to know my granddaughter and make sure she had a nice life, whatever the shortcomings of the parents are.

I have friends who found themselves in this situation twice. The first time, the girl's mother was loving and caring, but she came from a desperately poor background and didn't have much education. My friends had an (I think) unofficial visitation schedule, so I met the child a number of times and the mother once. They prioritized things like dance lessons and piano lessons and books and such, and I imagine they facilitated child support. That child graduated from Harvard a couple of years ago.

I didn't meet their second granddaughter or know much about her mother's situation, but my friends ended up adopting her as a toddler when they were in their sixties. This required them to delay their retirement. That child should be college-aged by now. I don't know how she's doing, but I do know that my friends gave her everything she needed to do well. My hat's off to them.

If my friends, a therapist and a school counselor, can do this, the president of the United States and his wife, who holds a doctorate in education, could be grandparents to this child.

quote:

Maybe she just thinks it’s unconscionable to so publicly reject a little girl?

Why should she not write about it?

The rejection is public because the press, some outside entities, and maybe some members of the little girl's family have made it so. The little girl is 4. I doubt she's reading this stuff online, and she only knows what she's told.

quote:

As she framed the story, the Bidens look pretty bad, but I'm not sure I trust Maureen Dowd to present the full picture.

This article gives an overview of the situation.

quote:

The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandfather, Rob Roberts, described her as whip-smart and funny.

“I may not be the POTUS,” Mr. Roberts said in a text message, using an acronym for the president, but he said he would do anything for his granddaughter. He said she “needs for nothing and never will.”

quote:

Her parents ended a yearslong court battle over child support on Thursday, agreeing that Mr. Biden, who has embarked on a second career as a painter whose pieces have been offered for as much as $500,000 each, would turn over a number of his paintings to his daughter in addition to providing a monthly support payment. The little girl will select the paintings from Mr. Biden, according to court documents.

“We worked it out amongst ourselves,” Lunden Roberts, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with The New York Times. “It was settled” in a discussion with Mr. Biden, she said.

quote:

Before Thursday’s settlement, Mr. Biden had paid Ms. Roberts upward of $750,000, according to his attorneys, and had sought to reduce his $20,000-a-month child support payment on the grounds that he did not have the money. The new amount is lower than what had been originally ordered by the court, according to a person familiar with the case.

quote:

Aside from the news coverage and commentary, allies of the Biden family are privately worried that the involvement of right-wing operatives in the matter has made any engagement harder for the family.

I'm not defending the Bidens, or trying to put down the little girl's family. As with so many situations in life there are a lot of things that could have been done differently and better, but that hasn't happened.

This reminds me a bit of the Harry and Meghan family saga...If a famous name weren't involved, no one would ever have paid attention to what is going on there. I doubt very much that most of the people who have this Biden thing on their radar (present company excluded) really give a damn about the girl.

Meghan and Harry, as I've said in other threads, are not only famous (and doing a piss poor job of it), they are members of a family of great historical importance (and doing a piss poor job of it).

I admit the sociopath, her useful idiot, and the drama they deliberately create are on the mundane side.