Interesting Take

Marilyne Robinson on Biden, Barbie, and other things... 

What’s the last movie you saw? 

Gee, I don’t know. Oh, ha! I tried to watch “Barbie,” but it stopped in the middle. I didn’t deal with the problem. 

What did you think of the parts you saw? 

It was not addressed to me, let’s say that. If pink by itself is a toxin, I think that was the effect that it had on me.

On Biden: 

Because Obama’s signature quality was youth, and Biden’s is age. Frankly, I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.