creepy Joe

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/02/19/handsy-joes-veep-creep-media/

One of the clearest signs of media bias is when reporters are made more uncomfortable by the act of criticizing the Obama administration than by the behavior they’re criticizing. Case in point: yesterday’s piece in the Washington Post by Nia-Malika Henderson, in which she struggles mightily with the fact that, thanks to conservative objections, Joe Biden’s incredibly creepy behavior toward women in public is getting tougher to ignore.

Handsy Joe’s veep creep is by now a staple of the Obama administration’s public events. Conservatives have long been frustrated by the pass Biden’s racist comments, obviously false stories, and emptyheaded rhetoric get from the media when the same press would hammer Republicans for even approaching the vice president’s antics. What conservatives would really prefer is not that Biden be run out of town with the same pitchforks and torches employed against Republicans but that the political correctness that suffocates public discourse in America be set aside far more often for both parties.

The latest incident was at Tuesday’s ceremony for new Defense Secretary Ash Carter. While Carter was at the podium, his wife walked up nearby. Joe Biden put his hands on her shoulders, left them there for about thirty seconds, and then leaned in to whisper something in her ear. The screenshot of the whisper quickly made the rounds (the full video of the encounter is here) and conservatives began another round of “What If A Republican Did This?”

But this latest incident had more force than, say, Biden’s comment about Somali immigrants being cab drivers in Delaware (made the same day). That’s because the Obama White House’s “war on women” has played virtually any Republican policy as some sort of insult to women. Additionally, the continuing scandal of false rape allegations, fake campus rape statistics, and the denial of due process to young men accused of sexual assault has created an atmosphere where many men seem to be assumed guilty from the outset. Yet Biden gets a pass.

So Henderson took to the Post to explain Biden’s behavior by claiming he’s just a goofy throwback to an age when accosting women was a more endearing practice. And her defense-which-she-insists-is-not-a-defense of Biden is a perfect example of the lengths liberal journalists will go to convince themselves and the country that they didn’t put a hound and a weirdo a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Here’s Henderson, playing off a column by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York:


Biden is a creature of his time; that’s not so much an excuse as it is context. He is folksy and always (overly) familiar, the kind of guy who name-checks somebody named “Mouse” at an NAACP convention.

Those personality quirks have typically been viewed as part of his charm and political strength. But the recent display does, as York and others suggest, raise the specter of sexism.

Well, no. The display doesn’t raise the specter of sexism so much as conservative journalists fed up with the hypocrisy point out the sexism. Henderson is talking about it because York is talking about it.

Henderson continues:


The right has suggested that if Biden were a Republican, the press would be much harder on him. I’m not so sure that’s the case.

That needs no specific rebuttal, right? It’s too obviously insane to need any further deconstruction, yes? Back to Henderson:


He is given a pass because he is from a different time. There are plenty of older male politicians whose frame of reference in greeting the opposite gender is far too 1960s rather than 2010s; almost none of them are on-camera nearly as much as Biden is.

Sure. And of course that was the reaction when Foster Freiss retold an old birth-control joke, right? No? It’s also worth pointing out that the “he’s old, give him a break” defense doesn’t seem to show up on other issues for GOPers either (like race).

Here’s Henderson’s conclusion:


But as a man who prides himself on his work on women’s issues, Biden might heed his own advice. He said that attitudes are changing about what “constitutes appropriate behavior.” That should probably apply to Joe Biden’s interactions with women too.

Kid gloves doesn’t begin to cover it.

Look, Biden’s not some threatening sexual predator. I’m sure he means well. And in the annals of Democratic Party men, he’s tame. Allahpundit grades such incidents “On a scale of one to Ted Kennedy.” Ted’s more successful brother was probably worse, though he didn’t kill anybody.

On some level, you can’t really expect the party of FDR and Bill Clinton to even notice behavior like Biden’s. But as the Washington Post proves, even if you do finally force them to notice, you can’t make them care. After all, it’s not like Biden’s a Republican.