It was just another Tuesday for the vice president of the United States, and another week in which the mainstream media turned their genteel eyes away from the highly questionable conduct of the figure of low comedy whom tragedy might make our president.
On Tuesday morning, Joe Biden was photographed placing his hands in a cringe-inducingly inappropriate manner on the shoulders of a much younger woman — the wife of the about-to-be-sworn-in secretary of defense — and keeping them there . . . and keeping them there . . . and keeping them there . . . for 28 full seconds.
When Biden let her go at last, you could see Stephanie Carter relax her shoulders a little after having had them tensed up while he rested his hands upon them. Go watch it on YouTube. Some enterprising director will surely adapt the scene for one of those found-footage horror movies — "Paranormal Activity VI: The Bidening."
Biden's day of creepiness was far from over. In the afternoon, he spoke at the White House summit to combat violent extremism and made reference to the people of Somalia, who have suffered for decades under the yoke of warlords and Islamists.
According to the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book "Double Down," an exasperated Obama wondered aloud: "How many times is Biden going to say something stupid."
Of the Somalis living in his home state of Delaware in the capital of Wilmington, he said this: "If you come to the train station with me, you'll notice I have great relationships with them because there's an awful lot driving cabs and are friends of mine. For real. I'm not being solicitous. I'm being serious."
The thing is, he was being serious.
He was actually claiming to possess special knowledge of the woes of Somalis from having taken rides in their taxis. Aside from the offense provided by the some-of-my-best-friends-are-black trope here, does anyone actually believe that Biden has ever let a cab driver, Somali or otherwise, get a word in edgewise? Or anyone else, for that matter?
So a little groping in the morning and a little racial stereotyping in the afternoon; sadly for Biden, he had no evening events planned, or he might have hit the trifecta.
Yes, this is just Biden being Biden — which is to say, he's a socially inappropriate logorrheic.
Just a month ago he was caught on video trying to plant a kiss on the desperately uncomfortable 13-year-old daughter of Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who looked like she wanted to earth to open up and swallow her whole. Coons later said he was being nice and telling her a story about his own daughter Ashley, but the video makes it clear he was practically nuzzling her ear.
Critics questioned why Biden touched Sen. Chris Coons' daughter in January 2015.Photo: AP
As for racial stereotyping, there was the legendary moment back in 2006 when he told an Indian-American that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."
As for logorrhea, I've told the story in these pages before of a small lunch I attended with Biden in 1986 when he was still just a junior senator from Delaware. Someone asked him an opening question, and he completed his answer . . . 45 minutes later.
On Election Night 2012, President Obama called Biden "America's happy warrior." That's not what he says in private. In her book on the Obamas, Jodi Kantor reveals that Obama passed a note saying "Shoot. Me. Now."
To an underling during a Biden speech on the floor of the Senate in 2005. During the 2012 campaign, according to the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book "Double Down," an exasperated Obama wondered aloud: "How many times is Biden going to say something stupid."
These guys don't look too pleased with Biden's hands-on approach.Photo: AP
Heilemann and Halperin say the Obama team considered replacing Biden with Hillary Clinton but decided to stick with the "happy warrior" when polling showed a switch wouldn't make much of a difference. (And on an exceedingly rare occasion when Biden actually stuck to the script written for him, the one for his 2012 vice-presidential debate with Paul Ryan, he performed well.)
Biden's problematic behavior has been an issue for decades. He was drummed out of the 1988 presidential race when he appropriated an anecdotal story told by the British politician Neil Kinnock and tried to pass it off as his own.
Biden attends the State of the Union address in 2014.Photo: Getty Images
Despite all this, Obama put him in a position of power. Perhaps reporters and commentators should have objected?
It was of far more moment to the media that Rudy Giuliani, nearly 14 years out of office, said something slighting about Obama at a private dinner than that Joe Biden behaved grotesquely in two public sessions in his official capacity as the damn vice president of the United States.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word "bias" thus: "Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair." The Giuliani v. Biden hijinks this week is the pluperfect example of media bias.
On the one hand, three days of severely critical coverage of a remark by a Republican long out of office with demands that his fellow Republicans disavow what he said.
And on the other, a kind of shrugging and even gently amused acceptance of the inexcusable conduct of the man one heartbeat away from the Oval Office — who happens to be a Democrat. And who, of course, would practically have been run out of office for the very same behavior had he been a Republican.
Here endeth Example #3,877,491 of the workings of liberal-media bias. And like its 3,877,490 predecessors, those guilty of it will snort derisively and claim they have absolutely no idea what on earth you're talking about.
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