POLITICS

What Do Joe Biden, Winston Churchill, Bill Withers, and Marylin Monroe All Have in Common?

Not one of them can Ee-Nun-See-Ate Cleer-Lee

Photo by Rodolfo Clix on Pexels (free to use)

When I first heard Joe Biden speak, in 2020, I was concerned about what seemed an unusual hesitancy for someone about to take office as our president. In addition to the pauses, he was not always “enunciating clearly.” This was a phrase I learned in first grade when I was put into a special class for kids who, as I told my mother, “can’t talk right.”

Some of the kids stuttered. Some left out parts of words or substituted one sound for another. I lisped. Or, as I said to my mother, “I lithp.”

I had to learn to “ee-nun-see-ate cleer-lee.” Which I did fairly quickly:

“Say, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

“Okay. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Thix. Th…,”

“No: Ssssix. Ssssevn.”

“Oh, okay. Ssssix. Sssseven.”

“Now, you remember that. Ssss, not Th.”

My problem was not a speech impediment as such. It was, rather, a habit developed when I was two that my mother had not seen fit to correct. She thought it was cute.

It does seem as though I should have developed some sympathy for other kids in that class who did have speech impediments and whom I saw working hard to overcome them. However, later on in third grade at a different school, when I heard a smallish boy try to answer the teacher:

“s-si-six ti-ti-ti-ti-times t-two is t-tw- …”

… and when the teacher waved a hand dismissively, turned away, and asked the question of someone else who came up with “twelve,” and then smirked…

… well, I thought that smallish boy was stupid. I thought that smallish boy was stupid even though I should have known better.

My tendency to think of someone with a speech impediment as stupid or inadequate in some way persists. Even now, when I listen to a speech by Biden, I have to remind myself that the man is of sound mind and has a superior intellect (plus 51 years of experience in government and intentions to do right for the people). It’s just that his mouth sometimes has trouble shaping words.

Sound mind? Yes. It has been proven that stuttering is not caused by psychological or emotional problems — though psychological and emotional problems can ensue if someone who stutters is treated the way that third-grade teacher treated one of her students.

There are some brain-imaging studies that indicate there is more right-hemisphere brain activity (more attention, reasoning, and problem-solving) in adults who stutter, with less of the left-hemisphere motor activity involved in speech. But that has to be beneficial for someone who has to be cognizant of a number of complex world issues and make good decisions.

Superior intelligence? Yes. The average stutterer’s IQ is 14 points higher than the national average, and Biden’s is one point more than that: 115. This puts him in the “high average” category.

It would seem Biden is in good company with other famous stutterers, including:

• Winston Churchill (prime minister of the United Kingdom during WWII: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”)
• King George VI of England (Remember the movie “The King’s Speech,” in which the king learns to enunciate clearly, slowly, deliberately? You can hear the king’s first speech to his people here.)
• James Earl Jones (whose basso profundo has been described as the voice of the ages and who will be remembered as much more than the voice of Darth Vader)
• Kenyon Martin (who in high school was subjected to jeers and taunts for his stuttering but who says confronting the problem was the catalyst that allowed him to become the №1 college player in the NBA draft in the year 2000)
• Bruce Willis (who went from a stutterer with no good grades in school to an A-list actor after acting classes and speech therapy)
• Bill Withers (“Then I look at you, And the world’s alright with me, Just one look at you, And I know it’s gonna be, A lovely day” — but only after a lot of speech therapy in the Navy)
• Ken Venturi (the “voice of golf” for 60 years, additionally the first national spokesman for the Stuttering Foundation)
• Mel Tellis (country music star who stuttered when he spoke — but not when he sang)
• And last but not least, Marylin Monroe (who overcame her stuttering through practicing that breathy delivery you thought was natural, and oh, so sexy)

Some pretty smart and capable people stutter.

I do wish Biden had a more forceful manner of speaking and didn’t have to pause mid-sentence every now and then to avoid a stammer. But I can overlook a minor motor inability even when the Republicans try to make a big deal out of it. A sound mind, a superior intellect, experience, and good intentions are better than “ee-nun-see-ate-ing cleer-lee” on any day. Especially on a day in the future when we will be voting.

A human, not an AI text generator, wrote this story. (More Info)

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