Let's briefly recap the week of Joe Biden, current vice president of the United States and the presumptive front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, shall we?
- On Tuesday, he uses the term "Shylock" to refer to shady bankers. Shylock is, in addition to being a character in a play by Shakespeare, widely considered to be an anti-Semitic slur, especially when used in discussions of the predations of the financial class.
- On Wednesday, he refers to Asia as "the Orient." As every PC-indoctrinated college graduate knows, referring to Asia as the Orient is offensive for some reason.*
- And, finally, on Friday, Biden praised Bob Packwood's outreach efforts with women at a conference filled with women. Here's the second line from the Wikipedia entry on Bob Packwood: "He resigned from the United States Senate, under threat of expulsion, in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault of women emerged."
In other words, Joe Biden has had a rather spectacular week.
I bring all this up because a.) it amuses/saddens me (the man is the vice president of the United States, after all) and b.) because it raises a rather serious question: What would Joe Biden have to do to inspire the sort of outrage we'd see if a Republican back-bencher did any of the above? Where are the weeks of outrage, the endless montages of Biden offending all the people? What do we have cable news for if not to gin up phony outrage against politicians who make stupid mistakes?
Now, look, I realize that because he is a Democrat he gets away with all the things. I'm not naive. But for the love of God, this double standard is getting absurd. What would it take to get a "legitimate rape"-style firestorm brewing? What if he drowned a sack of kittens? People love kittens. Maybe he could punch an old woman in the face, would that gin up the mob? What if he joined ISIS and beheaded a journalist? Perhaps then the deluge would come forth?
Haha, just kidding. "That's just Joe!" the press would say. "He's so silly." Indeed he is. Indeed he is.
*I've never quite understood why, but whatever. Their rules. I'm sympathetic to Charlie Cooke's point that this sort of outrage-mongering is dumb. Again: their rules. Yes yes, two wrongs do not make a right, but being wronged repeatedly without pushing back strikes me as counterproductive.