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Bozell Column: Joe Biden, The Media's Secret Quayle
NewsBusters ^ | February 11, 2014 | Tim Graham

Posted on 02/11/2014 8:19:32 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Hidden just below the surface of the liberal media is a barely noticed trend of patronizing contempt: Joe Biden is the Democrats' Dan Quayle, but because he is a Democrat they'll do anything to avoid treating him like they treated Dan Quayle.

The Washington Post trumpeted a new poll recently that showed Hillary Clinton was cleaning Biden's clock in an early poll among Democrats, 73 percent to 12. The Post saw that as great news for Hillary, but not as disastrous news for the man who's currently in his second term as vice president. Try to imagine Al Gore pulling 12 percent in a presidential poll during Clinton's second term.

Politically, Biden is a Joke Man Walking. But shhh, we're not supposed to notice. It might make the president who selected him look bad.

Biden's unleashed some jaw-dropping gaffes that the networks have skipped. In 2008, he bashed his friend McCain: "John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

Katie Couric earned a "Cronkite Award" for shoving Sarah Palin around in 2008, but a few days earlier she threw softball questions at Biden -- and Biden still managed to mangle history: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed." Roosevelt wasn't president in 1929, and there was no television. But Couric didn't correct him, and ABC ignored it. NBC noticed, briefly.

Now take Biden's latest gaffe about New York City. Hong Kong's airport is shiny and new, he reported. "But if I blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, 'I must be in some Third World country.' I'm not joking," he said. New York mayor Bill de Blasio called it "inappropriate," saying Biden's speech was "not the right way to talk about it."

If a Republican had said this, it would be declared a racial slur and there would be hell to pay. But Biden is Biden, and gets another mulligan. The New York Times helpfully wrote a story headlined "Some See Biden's 'Third World' Description of La Guardia as Too Kind." Time magazine explained de Blasio's ties to Hillary Clinton, "for whom he worked as Senate campaign manager in 2000, could be coloring de Blasio's strong rebuke of Biden."

In December, Biden upset feminists while talking to female employees at an internet company in Japan. Biden was scheduled to address the company's female employees and "discuss the economic impact of women in the corporate world." Instead, while talking to the women, he blurted, "Do your husbands like you working full time?" Network coverage? Zero.

"CBS This Morning" covered the Biden Asia trip for four days in a row, but never found time for that clip. If a Republican like Rick Santorum had said it, it would have been painted as a dark male chauvinist moment.

The most recent proof of the media's disinterest in Biden's outrages came in a February 7 interview on CNN's "New Day." Anchor Kate Bolduan displayed her servility to the Democrats from the opening chatter about how much Biden loves Amtrak trains. Her first question asked about what he hopes to achieve as the leader of a new presidential task force on job training.

Riveting, CNN, just riveting.

The so-called "worldwide leader" in news couldn't muster a single question about the ongoing failures of Obamacare, the IRS harassment of conservative groups, the muddle of Afghanistan, or the fiasco in Benghazi. Instead, Bolduan pestered Biden about when he would announce whether he would run for president and whether his wife would approve, with zero mention of his very weak polls. Before that, she wondered "Can I ask you one fun question about Corvettes?"

This was Bolduan's toughest question: "What do you say to your fellow Senate Democrats who have made it pretty clear that they don't want the President anywhere near their state this election cycle? And you jokingly kind of said, okay, I'll stay out of it. But what do you say to them?" Biden replied "I know I've been invited to go into well over 128 races so far. And so there's some places the President is considerably more popular than I am."

Even here, some so-called reporters seemed more like press secretaries than reporters. Shira T. Center at the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call helpfully guessed that CNN had provided this hot scoop: "Biden Boasts Democrats Want Him to Campaign for Them."

Joe Biden is a national embarrassment, so much so that even with the national media doing their best to cover up, still the never-ending gaffes make their way out to John Q. Public, who will never vote him into any national office ever again.


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: biden; demagogicparty; memebuilding; palin; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; quayle
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1 posted on 02/11/2014 8:19:32 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Let’s just hope he runs. It will be the only and well-deserved comic relief we’ll get in the immaculation of Hillary.


2 posted on 02/11/2014 8:25:55 PM PST by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Keep Biden viable so he’ll make Hillary scrape for the nomination. (Besides, he’s extremely beatable.)


3 posted on 02/11/2014 8:26:08 PM PST by TBP (Obama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed."

Dan Quayle never said anything that dumb.

4 posted on 02/11/2014 8:27:13 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: Fiji Hill

Quayle never said anything dumb, just couldn’t spell worth a crap.


5 posted on 02/11/2014 8:32:34 PM PST by doc1019
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To: bigbob

My hope is that Hillary is to sick to run and that Biden gets the nomination and loses in the biggest landslide in history to Cruz or Palin :)


6 posted on 02/11/2014 8:35:39 PM PST by TexasFreeper2009 (Obama lied .. the economy died.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I’ve met Dan Quayle . Twice ....he is nothing like Biden appears to be . Biden is a phony , arrogant SOB ; clueless in just about every way . A prop .
Dan Quayle , on the other is a solid , look-you-in-the-eye guy , who actually listens to what you have to say , and does not look around , or at his watch . He radiates a lot of good vibes and when I told him I had voted for him back in the day
and had wanted to vote fro him again , he profoundly thanked me . It’s a pity that he is not more visible and involved in the whole process anymore . We could do far worse .


7 posted on 02/11/2014 8:37:59 PM PST by LeoWindhorse
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...

> Hidden just below the surface of the liberal media is a barely noticed trend of patronizing contempt: Joe Biden is the Democrats’ Dan Quayle, but because he is a Democrat they’ll do anything to avoid treating him like they treated Dan Quayle.

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.


8 posted on 02/11/2014 8:40:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv (http://www.freerepublic.com/~mestamachine/)
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To: doc1019
The spelling thing was bunk.

Quayle was handed a spelling bee card by the school. His card said "potatoe". A boy stood up and wrote "potato" on the blackboard. Quayle looked at the card, looked at the board, and said "you left the e off the end".

The school was either dumb or evil. Quayle trusted them.

9 posted on 02/11/2014 8:42:05 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

To: ClearCase_guy

Unfortunately the whole thing was on TV and this little mistake probably have cost him his chance at the Presidency.


11 posted on 02/11/2014 8:46:00 PM PST by doc1019
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To: doc1019

Actually, the way I heard it, it was the teacher in the class who gave Quayle the wrong spelling, and he, not quite sure and astoundingly thinking a teacher might know better than he did, went with the misinformation - so much for American public school education.....


12 posted on 02/11/2014 8:50:19 PM PST by Intolerant in NJ
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

13 posted on 02/11/2014 8:51:29 PM PST by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Joe is just a “Biden” his time and he some the one who the democrats will “aBide”. As one who opposes the budgetary forces of both established parties, it seems that many from both parties shall reject the nominations they offer up and in essence default to the republicans as an alternative. Too bad that in twenty years the TEA party will have taken the place of the Chicago Militant Left being established on the Right.


14 posted on 02/11/2014 8:52:54 PM PST by Jumper
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To: LeoWindhorse

I don’t blame Dan Quayle for keeping a low profile. The media treated him like shit, and for what? Misspelling the word potato? One can only imagine the commentary that would ensue had he asked a man in a wheelchair to stand up or claimed to have visited 57 states. The unjustified savaging of Dan Quayle vs the blind eye turned to Biden’s serial gaffs is evidence enough of the leftist bias of the legacy media.


15 posted on 02/11/2014 9:03:44 PM PST by beef (Who Killed Kennewick Man?)
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To: ClearCase_guy

A popular myth among the leftists is the Dan Quayle “latin” quote. I like to let them wade chest deep into that one before I direct them to snopes where they have to read that he never said it. They look like they just found out Santa really doesn’t exist!


16 posted on 02/11/2014 9:13:11 PM PST by beef (Who Killed Kennewick Man?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Dan Quayle’ s supposed idiocy was a complete wholecloth, media manufacture.

Look him up on YouTube. He’s insightful & intelligent.

We should’ve known by his treatment we’d be in for the present trouble, the Neo-Stalinist media megalopoly threatening our freedom and prosperity.


17 posted on 02/11/2014 9:31:47 PM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Reference treatment of Dan Quayle. Much of the press seem to have the twisted soul of a Bill Maher and the acute razor sharpness of a snide Jon Stewart.

Have they no shame? To echo one of their own.

18 posted on 02/11/2014 9:57:39 PM PST by Peter Libra
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To: Fiji Hill

Dan Quayle was not dumb. He was just a republican. He could also beat Obama at golf with one hand, but the press pitched a fit when he played.


19 posted on 02/11/2014 10:42:21 PM PST by billhilly (Has Pelosi read it yet?)
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To: bigbob

I’m just wondering how they are going to get all those Campaign Pool-Reporters on his short yellow campaign bus.


20 posted on 02/12/2014 3:58:57 AM PST by Gaffer (Comprehensive Immigration Reform is just another name for Comprehensive Capitulation)
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