Hunter Biden Is an Excellent Writer. Maybe That's Not So Surprising.
To riff off of an old adage, maybe hurt people can help heal people.
When Hunter Biden — one of two surviving sons of former President Joe Biden’s — was just a small child, he experienced life-changing trauma.
A week before Christmas, his mother drove Hunter and two of his siblings on a rural road when a tractor trailer slammed into their car. Just six weeks after Joe Biden was elected to the Senate from Delaware, Hunter’s mother and his 13-month-old sister Amy were killed.
Hunter and his brother Beau survived, but they suffered injuries inside and out. Hunter experienced both a fractured skull and brain damage; the trauma was something his body was left to carry for the rest of his life.
I bring all this up because I just learned it when Hunter appeared on the Dax Shepard and Monica Padman-helmed interview podcast Armchair Expert. The younger Biden has been having a bit of a media moment lately — which involves joining X and dropping some of the most fire Tweets on the service, sounding off on politics alongside California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, and touring the broader podcast circuit.
Until now, I — like many Americans — thought of Hunter Biden as little more than the least impressive offspring of the former president. It seemed like he survived largely off of nepotism related to famous father (how likely is it, really, that Hunter’s an expert on both public transit and Ukrainian gas?). And the Hunter Biden laptop revelations made sure the entire world knew about his less savory exploits.
But beyond the sensationalist and lewd details of Hunter’s personal life there appears to sit a man whose worldview appears to be perceptive and enlightening. He’s become a bit of a social media sensation lately not because he just happens to be related to a famous person — who really cares about Chelsea Clinton’s Tweets, as a counter-example — but because he’s actually an excellent writer and interview subject.
The Shepard interview above, for instance, is a fascinating discussion about the toll that addiction can take on a person; Shepard, a recovering alcoholic himself, and Biden discuss the topic with a mastery only people who’ve experienced it themselves can deploy.
And his commentary on politics has been just as refreshing.
Take his defense of Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has been mired in a bunch of scandals about his personal behaviors (ranging from tattoos to sexting). Biden challenged critics of Platner to prove that they’re so clean and proper:
I always say to people: show me your phone. Give me access to your iCloud. Let's go through it and pull everything we can find that's inappropriate... And if that's the standard by which we're going to judge people, particularly people in elected office, then I don't think we're going to have many people in elected office.
He’s even pretty funny. When someone online mocked him for his drug addiction, arguing it doesn’t make him look sympathetic, he retorted, “Sympathetic? I actually look pretty good for a crack addict. Give me some credit dude.”
And he’s even a great artist, although maybe his paintings weren’t really worth $500,000 a pop.
It’s been surprising that Hunter Biden is more than your run of the mill nepo baby. He’s actually witty and more than a little talented. But should we really be shocked that someone whose life has involved so much trauma — from the early deaths of many of his close family members to living with drug addiction — can make us laugh, smile, or even think?
“Hurt people hurt people,” the old adage goes. And there’s a lot of truth to that, including in Hunter Biden’s life. His drug addictions and infidelity destroyed his first marriage; his business and personal conduct served as a political anchor around his father’s neck.
But if you look around the world of art, entertainment, and culture, some of our best minds have been people who have lived messy lives.
Take Mel Gibson, the epic actor who helmed the Lethal Weapon series and put on his director’s hat for The Passion of the Christ and Hacksaw Ridge. Decades ago, Gibson was in the news for an antisemitic tirade; years ago, he also plead guilty to misdemeanor battery of his loved ones. That’s terrible behavior. But I’m still going to watch every movie he makes.
Tom Cruise, an even bigger action star, has always been controversial for his membership in The Church of Scientology. But however odd or discomfiting we find the practices of Scientologists, we’re all going to be comfortably seated to see Tom Cruise screaming as he does some of the most insane stunt work of any modern actor.
Sure, there’s the occasional Tom Hanks, a man so pure he was chosen to portray Mr. Rogers in the biopic. But a lot of creative, artistic, musical, and otherwise talented people are wildly imperfect. Let’s remember that Vincent van Gogh cut off his own ear.
Producing art often requires us to reach for places that other people haven’t been. That means tapping into trauma and terror, like Biden’s experience losing his mother and sister to a horrific car accident and years battling drug addiction. While he and other flawed creatives have lived lives that brought considerable pain to their loved ones, we should encourage them to use their trauma for good.