The prevailing opinion about Vice President Joe Biden is that he’s a gaffe machine with a knack for grammatical blundering as well speaking inappropriately or awkwardly. Dare I say that, in terms of pure folly, some Bidenisms rival Bushisms? My favorite is when he revealed the location of the secret Vice Presidential bunker (here), and it turned out to be actually underneath the Vice President’s house. Huh! So glaringly obvious that I never would have looked there.
Biden’s verbal bloopers are not nearly as brainless or abundant as GWB’s, but then the Obama administration seems to have gagged Joe soon after he pissed off the airline industry by airing semi-legitimate concerns about catching the swine flu on planes (here).This comment prompted some media observers to wonder if Biden has some sort of cognitive speech disorder that prevents him from being able to keep his hysteria to himself and shut the fuck up.
Yesterday, at the memorial service for the 29 West Virginian miners killed in a mysterious explosion, both Obama and Biden were present to deliver emotional, gut-wrenching eulogies. With the Administration’s approval ratings on a precipitous wane, this horrific mining disaster was an opportune chance to remind the hoi polloi that this Administration is in touch with our day-to-day concerns… though the vast majority of us really aren’t concerned with mine safety standards, but you know. It’s symbolic. So they decided to unloosen Biden’s muzzle and let the man speak.
And this is what came out (here). Not too bad, although it had its moments of weirdness, notably:
For you know this band of 29 roughneck angels watching over you are doing that just now, as they sit at the right hand of the Lord today — and they’re wondering, is all that fuss about me?
This band of 29 roughneck angels! When I read that, I immediately flashed upon Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and thought, What a great line of beatnik poetry. It’s the best thing Joe Biden has ever said: an interior feeling, bourne from grief and dismay and voiced in simple universal language with enough uncluttered space around it as to resonate like a lone cello on a barren stage. Carl Sandburg once said that poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Doesn’t Biden’s “roughneck angels” capture the essence of hyacinths and biscuits?
