Social media can quickly and easily dredge up the past, and you don’t want to be upstaged by someone who did a superior job many years earlier.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden traveled to New London, Connecticut and gave the Coast Guard Academy’s Commencement address. Such an event is as big a moment for a new president as it is for the cadets. Biden took to social to media, writing, «I was honored to speak at the Coast Guard Academy’s Commencement today. To the class of 2021: congratulations. May God protect you all as you set out on your journeys, and may God protect all those who wear the uniform of the United States of America.» However, what might be most remembered by those cadets in attendance wasn’t Biden’s upholding of the tradition of absolving graduates of all «minor infractions,» or even the story he told of a college prank he actually committed. Rather what might have been the most memorable moment of the speech were the poor choice of words the «commander in chief» chose when describing the cadets. After attempting to poke some humor at the U.S. Navy’s expense, Biden suggested the graduates – newly minted officers of the United States Coast Guard – were a «dull class.» In his first commencement address as the nation’s commander in chief, President Biden fumbled an old joke badly, «I can only assume that you’ll enjoy educating your family about how the Coast Guard is quote ‘The hard nucleus around the Navy forms in times of war.
