It was a moment of extraordinary triumph, a watershed event in American history that would likely be remembered as President Obama's crowning achievement. So naturally Joe Biden had to go and drop an F-bomb on live TV. During the health care reform signing ceremony, Biden was caught on a live mic whispering to Obama, "This is a big f*cking deal!" (Watch the video) Say what you will about our gaffe-prone veep, but when history calls, Biden can be counted on to commit a gaffe worthy of the occasion. In fact, Biden's F-bomb gaffe now tops our list of the Top 10 Joe Biden Gaffes of All Time. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs apparently agrees with Biden. He sent out this Tweet: "And yes Mr. Vice President, you're right..." Republicans are jumping all over Biden for using profanity. But let's not forget the time that Dick Cheney famously told Sen. Patrick Leahy to "go f*ck yourself" on the Senate floor.On the F-bomb scale, Biden's is not a big f*cking deal by comparison. While Biden got swept up by the historic nature of the moment, Cheney simply enjoyed being a doucehbag of a historic nature.
How fast are Americans when it comes to making a quick buck? Just hours after Joe Biden let loose with an f-bomb that was caught by an open microphone following President Barack Obama’s signing of the health bill into law this morning, his exact exclamation — “This is a big f— deal” — has already become a t-shirt (caution, salty language ahead if you click on the link) available for sale in sizes running from S to 6X. It’s unlikely there will be profit-sharing for Biden. Then again, there probably won’t be political fallout for the Vice President, either. Biden is so gaffe prone that he can basically say whatever he wants at this point and, like a crotchety old relative at a family gathering, people chuckle and chalk it up to Joe being Joe — and make a t-shirt.
Joe Biden just handed the media an easy comic relief story (and a great trademark Joe Biden gaffe), but with the great power to entertain also comes the great responsibility not to offend. So how did the mainstream media chose to report the story without using Biden’s off-color adjective for the health care bill law? We went with the poignant euphemism “f-bomb;” for all you psycholinguistics majors out there, here’s what the rest of the media did.
- The Associated Press, which prides itself on its “objective” and generally colorless coverage, avoided the word entirely in the title of their report (“How Big a Deal? Ask Joe Biden”). They used dashes to eliminate the unsightly letters.
- The Washington Post’s “Reliable Source” column, being a gossip column and all, has a longer leash to run with, so they used some of Eric Massa’s “salty” language. The offensive word was replaced with “fracking.”
- Meanwhile, the New York Times was prim and proper about Joe Biden’s “expletive,” describing it as “an adjective between big and deal, that begins with ‘f.’” But they embedded a video from the Mediaite library, so +25 “Whose Line is it Anyway?” points to the Times!
- More points to the Columbia Journalism Review (we have egos to feed) for referencing us, and for brilliantly avoiding covering the issue by quoting the Times‘ ladylike writearound on Biden’s vocabulary, and lovingly mocking it.
- The Kansas City Star was possibly the least amused of this press bunch, calling the word a “stinker” and nicknaming Biden “The Mouth that Roars.”
- Apparently the British are much more lax about this kind of thing than Americans are: although a series of asterisks clothes the wanton word, the Times UK is calling it an “earthy reminder of its historic importance” that “helped immortalize” the moment. Let’s not get carried away, here.
- The New York Post never fails to disappoint with sensational headlines, so why are we not surprised that the home page is now flashing the above comic book-esque photo headline, with an accompanying article opening with “Oh Joe he didn’t!”
- Fox News, who first broke the story, went with the AP standard but, of course, they have more to report than just the news. The inappropriate language, they argue, was indicative of an “after-party” attitude the Democrats brought to the bill-signing. How unprofessional.
- MSNBC, on the other hand, did a bit of everything, combining “&*$#ing” on the front page and a variety of number of dashes in the actual piece. They did report on some previously un-seen (irrelevant) “conflict,” though: President Obama seemed “impatient.” Drama!
- And CNN, the most sober of the trio, went with Abigail Adams references (and the classic “F-word”).
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