Washington is abuzz with how Joe Biden has apparently devolved from good ol’ Uncle Joe to the “Creepy Uncle.”
The latest cause of these musings — and perhaps the last straw, some are indicating — is the incident in which the veep was all over the wife of Ashton Carter while the new SecDef was being sworn in:
Joe Biden Got A Little Handsy With The New Defense Secretary’s Wife http://t.co/MnEyWjx8Ywpic.twitter.com/Cz2fW0JiWn
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) February 17, 2015
This has led the media, both new and old, to recall similar incidents. New York magazine has put together a slideshow. Enjoy.
The Washington Post has run a fun piece imagining an intervention in which everyone Joe knows — “Jill, Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia, John (Kerry), John (McCain) and several women he recognizes only from having told them, once, in passing ‘No dates ’til you’re 30!'” stage an intervention to put an end to his pawing and whispering. An excerpt:
“Do any of these women look comfortable?” Sasha asks. She produces the most recent picture.
Joe squints at the picture. “Looks pretty comfortable to me,” he says. “Jill, that’s a comfortable face, right? That face says ‘I’m comfortable around this suave man.’”
“No,” Jill says….
Then there’s the Top Ten list of what Biden may have whispered to Stephanie Carter, courtesy of David Letterman:
10. “Let me know when this gets weird.”
9. “What is that, Pert Plus?”
8. “You have the clavicle of a much younger woman.”
7. “Have you seen ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’?”
6. “Is that the necklace I gave you?”
5. “I haven’t heard a word your husband said.”
4. “You look like young Jeanne Kirkpatrick.”
3. “Ever heard of a second Second Lady?”
2. “I don’t have a time machine but I do have a hot tub.”
1. “In the words of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, ‘I’m not 100 percent sober.'”
Not everyone is taking it lightly, though. Here’s a more serious piece setting out why our gregarious vice president should “probably” cut it out.
Yet Joe is a piker, a paragon of 21st-century Proximity Correctness, compared to his old friend Strom Thurmond, whom he famously eulogized so eloquently right here in Columbia.
Just to give you an idea of the difference, let’s turn again to the pages of New York magazine, which, in a piece about Sally Quinn, quoted from a book about Strom by our own Jack Bass:
Washington writer Sally Quinn told of a 1950s reception where: “My mother and I headed for the buffet table. As we were reaching for the shrimp, both of us jumped and let out a shriek. Senator Strom Thurmond, grinning from ear to ear, had one hand on my behind and the other on my mother’s. As I recall, we were both quite flattered, and thought it terribly funny and wicked of Ol’ Strom.”…
Perhaps we should stage the actual intervention sometime before Joe reverts to that standard of groping…
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And don’t miss this Daily Beast piece, which declares in its headline that “Joe Biden Needs a Tranquilizer Dart,” and refers to the “tactile cuckolding” of Mr. Carter….
That photo of Biden with his hands on her shoulders makes me uncomfortable just looking at it. She clearly looks like she would whack him with the Bible, were she to stoop to his unseemly behavior.
Mighty uncomfortable cabinet meetings ahead.
The photo clearly shows a smile on the face of the lady with Biden’s hands upon her shouders. Whatever Biden is whispering does not bother her at all. Chances are he mispoke, as usual, whatever wisecrack he was trying to make.
Biden is, however, an extremely creepy politician with a persistent smile to camouflage a slow wit.
Wow. That’s a very unhappy woman, Juan. He clearly has made her, very, very uncomfortable. I don’t think I have heard anyone say otherwise until you.
Well, Mark, the absence of a seconding opinion is most likely due to one of two things:
1. No one else took you comment seriously.
2. No one else bothered to enlarge the photo (180%) to make certain of her smiling.
Just saying…
I found a nice large copy Looks more like a tight-lipped grimace than a smile. Totally inappropriate, indefensible behavior for VPOTUS.
Totally indefensible for anyone who doesn’t have an intimate relationship with the woman involved.
Norm, I know someting of Biden’s past from a Delaware public offind neighbor (children played together). Biden’s political elevation beyond his state’s borders was enable by labor union thuggery to keep voters ignorant for his first senate win. Afterwards he had the power and help to his past. If I could agree with you and partisan journalists on the impact to the lady of Biden’s unseemly conduct, I would in an instant.
My photoanalysis absent obvious discomfort on the lady’s part gives Biden an undeserved pass.
There was nothing admirable about Strom.
Oh, I don’t think anyone is saying there was. I’ve always thought it sort of creepy that Sally Quinn and her mother thought that behavior was cute…
By way of full disclosure, I should probably add this anecdote about the time that Biden creeped out my own daughter, without laying a hand on her…
It was at the same Rotary meeting at which I shot this bad video with a pre-iPhone smartphone.
As I said on my blog at the time, Joe was unusually Joe that day, just going overboard to overwhelm this conservative audience with his in-your-face bonhomie — leaving the podium to walk around among the tables and so forth.
Well, I took my daughter, who was then in college, to the meeting with me. Before it started, I took her up to introduce her to the senator, and explained that she was a student at USC.
Joe took note, and TWICE during his lengthy performance embarrassed her in the extreme by singling her out. At one point when he was walking among the tables, he suddenly lunged across the room to OUR table, leaned way across it toward my daughter, saying “THIS young lady, a student at South Carolina…”
He was making some point about how we older folks didn’t need to be leaving our debts for our children and grandchildren to pay, and was inspired to use her as his example of the younger generations.
My daughter, who was self-conscious being in such unfamiliar surroundings anyway, HATED it…
There are degrees, and varieties, of Joe-ness.
On an earlier occasion, I invited the same daughter to sit in and observe an editorial board meeting in which we were interviewing Joe Lieberman. That Joe kept himself to himself, and she liked HIM a lot…
“He was making some point about how we older folks didn’t need to be leaving our debts for our children and grandchildren to pay, ”
I’d let Joe feel up anyone he wants if he could fix that.
Doug your one track mind way of thinking is kinda creepy. You and I are paying off the debts of our parents and grandparents for fighting WW II and building the interstate highway system. And I’m very thankful for that.
None of this is half as creepy as when he chaired the Anita Hill hearings. He positively exuded good old boy why-is-this-woman-bothering-us attitude.
You do not touch people without their consent. I like Biden in general, but the dude needs to work on his boundaries.
I don’t think calling attention to someone at a Rotary meeting is out of line, though.
He’s like some American version of “The Continental” in the video of this I saw on CNN. I kept waiting to see if he would offer her a drink…champagne perhaps?
There’s a lot I like about Joe Biden, but his overly-familiar behavior with women is inappropriate for any man; even more so for a married man and VPOTUS.
I am not aware of ever seeing a picture of Joe Biden doing this. Have the media been protecting him? This is so inappropriate, especially so while being photographed in public. Is is possible that he has some form of brain injury, dementia?
Reminds me of George W giving Angela Merkel a shoulder rub at the u8 summit. Her reaction was priceless.
Full disclosure: I’m a Biden fan. I met him a couple of times (first time in Bennettsville!).
Channel surfing this morning I watched the CSPAN Biden/Carter swearing-in ceremony. Seems Biden and the Carters have known each other for a while. Carter was a proponent of deploying MRAPS (IED-resistant vehicles) in Iraq during the war. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say Joe was the most vocal and powerful Congressional advocate of MRAP deployment. It was mentioned prominently during Joe’s 2008 presidential primary campaign. I happened to be in a room on the other side of a partition while Biden discussed the details with an MRAP manufacturer on the eve of the dem presidential debate in Charleston. MRAPS are credited with being part of the 90 % reduction in IED deaths in Iraq during the war. My nephew was riding in a non-MRAP vehicle in Iraq when it hit an IED. The soldier sitting next to my nephew was killed. I asked my then-congressman if he was on board with spending $$$ on MRAPS. His response was that some other weapon would come along and render MRAPS non-effective. Tell that to the hundreds of guys alive today because of MRAPS. When I visited my congressman’s website, his lead story was about regulating the sale of horse meat. Thank you Mr. ex-congressman.
Driving my wife crazy last month I watched most of the new Congress senator swearing-in ceremony conducted by Joe. He has a way of making everyone feel special from the grandparents to the nieces and nephews. He’s just a touchy feely guy. I imagined how different that ceremony was when Chaney did the honors.
Lastly, I wonder what the mid-east situation would be if the Biden-Gelb plan would have been implemented. Would a semi-autonomous federalist system in Iraq prevented ISIS spread?
But leave it to us to focus on the superficial and inane.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?324394-1/defense-secretary-ashton-carter-swearingin-ceremony
http://www.c-span.org/video/?323601-1/senate-ceremonial-swearingin-vice-president-biden
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/joe-biden-iraq-107858.html
Doug, I like Biden, too. If he had stayed in the race, I might have pushed to endorse him instead of Obama in the 2008 SC primary, as I said at the time.
I even like his gregarious, touchy-feely manner, even though (or maybe because) I’m nothing like that. He’s a people person.
But I know that such a manner can make some people uncomfortable. And I’m frankly unsure where it crosses the line into being inappropriate…
You do not touch people without their consent, which may be implied by the circumstances. Easy.
I don’t think it’s that easy. There are people who touch other people all of the time, and it’s usually OK. And it would be even more awkward if every time they touched someone, they had to go through a ritual of, “may I touch you?” Now THAT would make it weird, whether it is or not. To touch with predetermination, rather than spontaneity, would be extra creepy.
Mind you, I am sticking up here for people who are VERY different from me. I don’t much like being touched, and I generally don’t touch others, partly because I don’t want to but partly because I’m not sure when it’s OK.
Implied. You may shake someone’s hand, give a triangle hug (the kind where your lower bodies stand away from each other), if the situation implies it is okay. You may touch someone’s arm. Do not touch his or her torso or legs without clearly implied consent.
and actually, a lot of times it’s not okay, but women put up with it out of politeness.