That Darn Joe!
(He’s wild! He’s wacky! He’s one heartbeat away from our nuclear codes!)
Okay, this week, let’s start with a joke:
Joe Biden.
[rim shot]
Yeah, you’re right. That’s not entirely fair. Let’s add a little context:
Joe Biden spoke.
[rim shot]
Get ready for it, citizens: Joe Biden, the unchallenged champ of “he said WHAT?” is back for an all-new round of speech spasms. True, “Boo-Boo” Biden’s always been hovering in the wings, forever floating about the perimeter, keeping a kettle of klutz simmering on the stove. But now that it’s re-election season, Joe and his patented Random Gaffe Generator will be all over the place; that is, unless he goes totally off the reservation and his party’s puppet-masters decide to “seal his records.”
Some beltway insiders are conjecturing that if Joe Biden doesn’t mind his mouth and curtail that urge to ad lib, his next job might be as a Lake Michigan reef.
[rim shot]
Yes, now that the 2012 Olympics have wrapped, Americans are awash in that other grueling, obsessive, every-four-year competition: upgrading our iPhones.
I’m kidding, of course. I’m talking about a different circus that’s come to town – that three-ring rubber-room insanity known as presidential politics. As if the faked, not-really-live, live Olympic coverage wasn’t bad enough (and it was), we now have to put up with parties, platforms, promises, position papers, polls, policies, pandering, pundits and politicians.
Politicians…that unpredictable subclass of upright mammals (well, usually) equipped with a special set of gifts:
Teeth so bright they require their own sunglasses
Hair that could double as a South Florida hurricane shelter
The uncanny ability to simultaneously shake your hand, pat your child’s head, wave at donors, and extract your wallet, with only two arms (well, usually), and do it all while smiling, spending money, and promising not to spend money
And now you and I are being force-fed a bottomless broth of political coverage-slash-cheerleading-slash-analysis-slash-opinion, unless, sometime just after the last election, you took the clever, preemptive action of cutting off your head. Even then, though, you’re probably not safe – some zealous TV pundit would still find you, tap out the most recent poll results on your chest cavity, and ask you for a donation.
(Yes, I know. You cut off your head. You don’t have ears to ask. They don’t care.)
Look, here’s some professional advice, and I’ll be honest (grab the honesty while you can – if our topic is politics, we won’t be seeing much of that). If you ever decide to write a humor column, politics is the easiest possible topic. Also, politics is the hardest possible topic. (Yes, I know. A lot of my professional advice is like that.)
Writing about politics is hard, because no matter what you write, you’ve immediately alienated half the country. It’s like picking sides in a family argument, or saying you like Batman more than Superman, or eating at Chick-fil-A.
On the other hand, writing about politics is easy, thanks to the huge, endlessly-renewable pool of material.
Which brings us back to our unrestrained friend, Joe Biden, the Incredible Shrinking Asset.
Now, to be fair, Joe’s hardly the only politician who regularly chews on his own feet. It’s just that he won’t shut up long enough for us to go write about anybody else.
For example, when Mitt Romney announced Congressman Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential pick, Romney goofed and introduced Ryan as “the next President of the United States.”
History was made today on the political front, when GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who kills women and is not a real Christian (or even worse, is) announced his running mate: Paul Ryan, a congenial Wisconsinite who likes fishing, camping, and pushing grandmothers off cliffs. For the first time in history, a Party has simultaneously nominated two misogynistic murderers for the White House!
[rim shot]
True, Barack Obama made the exact same mistake some 4 years ago, introducing Joe Biden as “the next President of the United States.” The difference is, when Obama announced that Biden was President, the entire state of Virginia committed suicide.
And then, not to be outdone, Joe Biden hopped on stage and referred to his running mate as “Barack America.”
It’s a gift. Boo-Boo’s in a class of his own.
Today, at a presser in Topeka, North Virginia, Joe Biden unveiled his own health care plan for Seniors. But then he dropped it. Aides say it was hours before they got the smell of Chivas out of the carpet.
[rim shot]
In fact, during one recent speech, Biden went so blank that people thought he was a tobacco executive. Joe forgot who his opponent was (he called him “Governor” Ryan). He forgot what state he was in (Virginia). He even forgot what century he was in (this one).
Today, at a campaign rally in Bangor, Kentucky, Joe Biden challenged the foreign policy credentials of his opponent, Monsignor Meg Ryan. Then Joe wowed the crowd with a rousing rendition of the Prince classic, “We’re gonna party like it’s 1899.”
[rim shot]
And Boo-Boo doesn’t just go blank; he goes blankety-blank, too. Joe’s shell-shocked handlers lightheartedly refer to his azure vocabulary as having “a firm commitment to adjective equality.” You or I would call it “swearing like Joe Pesci channeling Chris Rock at a Quentin Tarantino audition.”
The upcoming televised debate between Biden and Ryan may be the first debate in history to require an FCC-mandated five-second delay.
Paul Ryan, by the way, was selected as Romney’s running mate some sixteen days before the Republican’s national convention. Those that watch such things say it was an unusually early pick, a history-changing statistic if ever there was one, and I wanted to share that with you in case you’re not unconscious yet.
The political junkies rushed to point out that it was the earliest a Veep pick has ever been Veep-picked, except for the 2004 election, when John Kerry inexplicably tapped John Edwards, that well-groomed testament to testosterone. (The Edwards pick may have been rushed by necessity, since Kerry had to catch him in-between hair appointments and heir appointments.)
And while we’re on the subject of oddly-shaped heads, let’s give a nod to Nancy Pelosi, that strangely grinning, seemingly eternal Congressional fixture who now claims that the ghost of Susan B. Anthony speaks to her in the White House. That may or may not be true, but it’s still no excuse for a grown woman to walk around Washington with coins sticking out of her ears, especially a woman who walks like some sorority pledge prank victim whose pantsuit legs were sewn together at the knees. Basically, Nancy’s a cross between Kathy Bates in “Misery,” Lucy Ricardo off her medication, and the Tasmanian Devil on crack.
Nancy’s no longer a threat to become an Oval Office occupant, but not that long ago, she was third in line to be President, and the fact that Nostradamus never saw that coming is why I don’t own any ‘Nostradamus Rules’ t-shirts.
One final note about Boo-Boo: in 2008, Biden himself got the Veep nod from Obama only two days before the convention, possibly because Joe was hunkered down at his home in Memphis, Delaware, reading a comic book about the War of 1712 and watching the CBS news magazine “90 Minutes” with his wife, June Bidet.
Today, during an unplanned visit to Chicago, Vice President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the election campaign, due to experiencing a severe case of natural causes after running backwards at high speed into several dozen bullets. Biden referred to Taking the Big Dirt Nap as a “temporary setback” – after all, he can still vote and, as everybody knows, nobody messes with Joe.
[rim shot]
