A Word in Joe Biden's Defense

Although I am not supporting Joe Biden for President (I'm hoping that something can be done so President Bush can run again), I do want to say a word in his defense. He is being roundly and unfairly attacked for a statement he made in an interview with The New York Observer. Referring to Barack Obama, Biden said "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." Some people are saying that Biden's use of the word "clean" is racist or at least very strange. But I think most people are forgetting that Biden's words are not usually his own. His first campaign for President was derailed when he was caught cribbing from a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. It turns out that the source of this recent statement was also British, namely the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night.

In A Hard Day's Night people keep referring to Paul McCartney's grandfather, played by Wilfrid Brambell, as a "clean old man." According to the Internet Movie Database, this was a reference to the fact that Brambell played a rag-and-bone man in the British sitcom Steptoe and Son, whose catchphrase was "You dirty old man." Steptoe and Son was later remade in the United States as Sanford and Son, which starred Redd Foxx and was one of the most important early television series featuring African-American actors. So I think what Biden was actually saying was that Barack Obama reminds him of the beloved African-American comedian Redd Foxx, which is quite a compliment, really. Now that I have cleared that up, I hope we can go back to discussing important issues like Obama's middle name and Hillary Clinton's jokes.

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Jon Swift, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Redd Foxx, Neil Kinnock, Journalism, Politics