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‘Relax. This will only take eight more minutes for me to get through.’ (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“And then everyone clapped” is a classic way to call bullshit on someone spinning yarn about how great they are. Thing is, it is usually a response to someone’s nonsense — somebody should have briefed Biden on that little distinction before he started bragging about how great he handled cold calls back in law school. From Reuters:
President Joe Biden shared a story about his first torts class when his professor at Syracuse University College of Law called on him at random…to discuss a legal case, which Biden hadn’t read. The story came up during Biden’s October interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated his handling of government documents.
…
“And I had never read the case, and I stood up and I spoke for 10 minutes,” Biden said, according to the transcript. “The whole class stood up, started clapping.”His professor responded that Biden would be “a hell of a trial lawyer” but that none of his comments were relevant to the case at hand, said Biden, who added that he “didn’t take law school very seriously.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a representative of Syracuse Law, from which Biden graduated in 1968.
Nostalgia is often paired with rose-colored glasses, but at some point you have to recognize delusion:
Mind you, this happened in the mid 1960s. As bad as it is to sit through a bad cold call nowadays, you at least have the world wide web in your pocket when the person next to you publicly misses the point of Liebeck v. McDonald’s. The only reason anyone would have decided to give the kid who kept telling everyone he’s gonna be a senator some day a standing ovation after a cold call would have been because they were just that ecstatic that he finally shut up. I mean, who in their right mind, knowing they didn’t do the reading, bumbles through a cold call for 10 whole minutes? Do everyone a favor, admit you fell behind, and move on. Sure, the teacher might glare at you, but you’ll get over it just like everyone else does.
Whatever you do, don’t take it as an opportunity to brag about how your ineptness was rewarded decades later. Not the best look for a person who cares at all about their reputation.
Biden Recalls Bluffing Through A Law School Torts Class In Special Counsel Testimony [Reuters]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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