The other morning I was reading along in my New York Times and I came across these lines: Joe Biden’s “relationship with the Clintons has not been without awkwardness and slights.” Well, what were these slights and what was this awkwardness? There were none mentioned. Oh, to be sure there followed plenty of awkward New York Times journalism, but I could not perceive how Joe was responsible for them.

Here is how I would have rewritten the Times report: Joe Biden’s “relationship with the Clintons has not been without awkwardness and slights.” Then I would report what I have reported Biden saying many times before. On the occasion of Boy Clinton’s awarding hundreds of dubious pardons, including one to the late Mark Rich, I would report Joe saying on February 14, 2001: “I mean I just think it’s totally indefensible.” Moreover, I would include ABC News reporting Joe as saying, “I think either the president had an incredible lapse in memory or was brain dead when he did that one.”

Now that is awkwardness, and at the time many more Democrats joined in hoping to rid themselves of what Al Hunt at the time called the Clinton “albatross.” Yet today the Times has suffered amnesia as has Biden, as has Hunt. Though we AmSpec types remember everything.