Where’s Hunter?
The rhetorical question about Joe Biden’s troubled son was repeatedly asked by Donald Trump during last year’s US presidential election, but never caught fire in the manner of “Lock her up!” against Hillary Clinton.
When it emerged that Hunter would publish a memoir about his battle with alcoholism and drug abuse, and give TV interviews to promote it, some foresaw a ticking time bomb in the first 100 days of Biden’s government. It did not turn out that way.
Yet Hunter’s book is praised for its touching honesty and literary style and for the challenge to the stigma of addiction. As Republicans do not try to find an attack on Biden that will last, Hunter’s self-revelations are met by a shrug in a nation that has apparently been scandalized by Trump himself.
‘It’s amazing how many of their hopes and dreams focused on Hunter Biden’s addiction, Hunter Biden’s sex life, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and interesting for a political party based so much on’ nothing matters’ to discovering their disappointment that nothing matters, ”he said. Charlie Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.
“Didn’t they establish a small universe where nothing matters? You can pay off a porn star and it does not make a difference. Did they really think Hunter Biden would make a difference? ‘
In the memoirs, Beautiful Things, Hunter (51), a lifelong struggle with alcohol and drugs is set out. He writes that his ‘deep descent’ from drug addiction followed the death in 2015 in 2015 of his older brother, Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 46.
Hunter admits that ‘just for the past five years, my two-decade-long marriage has been dissolved, guns put in my face, and at one point I fell clean off the grid and lived in $ 59 a night super-motels. from I-95 while scaring my family even more than I do ”.
In an interview about the book on CBS, the president’s son recalls that he went 13 days without sleep when he cracked smoke and drank vodka. ‘I spent more time on my hands and knees smoking cigarettes – and smoking anything that even looks like crack cocaine. I probably smoked more Parmesan cheese than anyone you know. ”
The Biden family held an intervention at their home in Delaware in 2019 and invited two counselors from a rehab center for dinner. Hunter cursed and ran away from home, but was chased by his father through the driveway, which “grabbed me, swung around and hugged me. He held me tight in the dark and cried the longest. Everyone was outside now. ”
Hunter also used the book to deny wrongdoing on the board of Burisma, a gas company in Ukraine, where he earned more than $ 50,000 a month from 2014 to 2019. Republicans claim he benefited from his family name when his father was vice president. . Hunter’s tax cases are currently being investigated by the Department of Justice.
The memoir received positive reviews. Publishers Weekly found that Hunter’s “courageous self-evaluation makes the despair of drug abuse devastatingly palpable”.
Author Stephen King describes it as a sad and compelling readable character with a bravery that is ‘heartbreaking and wonderful’. He says, “Hunter Biden proves once again that anyone, even the son of an American president, can ride the pink horse in the nightmare.”
And Dave Eggers, whose books contain the memoirs A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, writes in another blurb: ‘Beautiful things are so concise, so unadorned and repulsive, that I do not have to turn the pages and sometimes my jaw off the ground do not pick up. does not move between the first and last page. ”
None of this gives Republicans the ammunition they were hoping for. Politically, the book was a dog that did not bark (unlike Biden’s real dogs, Champ and Major, who made headlines about biting incidents and defecating in a White House hallway), and instead getting into ‘ to change a liability, it only seems to strengthen Biden’s image as compassionate and human.
Sykes, founder and editor-in-chief of the Bulwark website, said: ‘It’s also a story of a very loving and loyal father and it’s hard to make it negative. There are many parents out there who know that dealing with a child with problems is one of the biggest challenges you face, which is why I think people will be just as empathetic as they view it as negative.
“Not to mention the fact that Joe Biden lost two of his children and his first wife under tragic circumstances puts the Hunter Biden story in a very different light. I always thought it was deeply cynical that Trump wanted to use it as a weak point to go after the one living son of a man who suffered through so much tragedy. ‘
The right’s attempts to demonize Hunter were further blunted by a crisis in their own ranks. The memoir played a second fiddle to near-daily revelations about Matt Gaetz, a fierce Republican congressman who is reportedly under investigation over allegations of an affair with a minor girl and payments for sex with women recruited online. Many observers find Gaetz a less sympathetic figure than Hunter.
Biden, 78, is far from the first president to investigate the behavior of his descendants. John Adams, the second president, once acknowledged, “My children give me more pain than all my enemies.” Adams turned down his third son, Charles, an alcoholic who was poor when he died of liver cirrhosis at the age of 30.
Joshua Kendall, author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama, said: ‘Throughout history, there has been a lot of alcoholism and drug abuse in the sons of presidents, but it has always been buried. The Republicans work of ‘Oh, alas, we are going to reveal these secrets and we will show that this new president has this substance abusive son and that it is terrible’.
‘But Hunter Biden breaks the mold by writing honest memoirs. It is different from the 18th century where it would all be hidden. By being so honest and straightforward, he takes away the political toxicity of his difficult life. This is a turning point in history where this material can no longer be used. That seems to be the lesson. ‘
Hunter helps demystify the lives of powerful politicians, Kendall added. ‘We learn that drug abuse can still happen just because you are rich and famous. We are much more tolerant of it.
‘If it happened 50 years ago, it might be much more useful ammunition for Republicans, but it’s upsetting because society has changed and we’m much more used to presidents being real people. He checked the gut thoroughly and I think it resonates with readers and can help other people with drug abuse. ”
The view is shared by Gabor Maté, a Canadian author and physician who has studied the link between addiction and trauma. He said: “Hunter’s share of his own trauma, addiction and ongoing work to recover will benefit greatly. I acknowledge his courage in it. Whatever some short-sighted politicians make of it, all of us in the medical and healing communities can only be grateful for his verdict. ”