Joe Biden's oddball "record player" sentence is helping him, because it's distracting us from the rest of what he said.

From the transcript (in response to the question "What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?):

I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title I schools, triple the amount of money we spend from 15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise, the equal raise to getting out -- the $60,000 level. Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need -- we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It's crazy. The teachers are -- I'm married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have -- make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School. We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It's not want they don't want to help. They don't -- they don't know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television -- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the -- the -- make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school -- a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

First, that word salad ought to cast doubt on the theory that the number of words a pre-schooler hears is what matters. Imagine playing CDs of Biden speeches to your baby to give him a boost in life. I'm thinking quality matters, not just quantity. And doesn't calm quiet benefit the child too? I can't believe that filling the air with chattering recordings is good for the young brain! I'm just going to guess that the studies of child development are looking at caregivers speaking to the child in person and saying words of substance that have to do with understanding the world around him and interacting with people who are looking him in the face.

Second, Biden is supposedly talking the vestiges of slavery, so the parents who "don't know quite what to do" are, unless he's gone totally off topic, black people. He's making them sound dumb and inept! And his solution seems to be to "make sure" to "bring social workers" into their homes "to help them deal with how to raise their children." Is that really his proposal — social workers in homes? Is that really what African Americans want to hear is the way "to repair the legacy of slavery"? White people taking responsibility is done not by intruding on white people but by sending social workers into the homes of black people?

Can we stop talking about the damned "record player" — which is so distractingly funny — and talk about those 2 things?