Night & Day: "Oops" vs. "Slur"

Today's N&D courtesy of Newsbusters:

Democratic presidential candidate (for now, anyway) Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware got headlines for all the wrong reasons yesterday when he referred to Sen. Barack Obama, who's also running for president, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" in an interview with the New York Observer.

"Biden Unwraps His Bid for '08 With an Oops!" read the headline over Adam Nagourney's Thursday story in the New York Times. Credit the Times for putting it on the front page, and to Nagourney for bringing up Biden's equally strange comment last summer that aired on C-Span: “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

But as NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein noted, the Times' headline does give Biden the benefit of the doubt that the remark was simply an "oops!," a gaffe, and not a reflection of Biden's real feelings toward blacks.

Back in 1995, when then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a conservative Republican, called gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank "Barney Fag" (Armey immediately corrected himself and later apologized to Frank) he didn't get the benefit of the doubt from Times' headline writers. The headline to a front-page story back on January 28, 1995 made it clear that Armey intended to "slur" his colleague, no "oops!" about it: "No. 2 House Leader Refers to Colleague With Anti-Gay Slur."

Nope...no liberal media bias!

Quote of the day

Though I dislike Al Sharpton for his race-baiting and moonbattery, he's good for a chuckle every once in a while. Here's Al Sharpton responding to Biden's comment yesterday that Sen. Barack Obama is "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean":

Mr. Sharpton said that when Mr. Biden called him to apologize, Mr. Sharpton started off the conversation reassuring Mr. Biden about his hygienic practices. “I told him I take a bath every day,” Mr. Sharpton said.

Touché, Rev. Al.

By the way, this isn't the first time that Biden has stepped in it. Last year, the plagiarist from Delaware made remarks about Indians, saying that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking." And the left accuses the right of prejudice? Pots and kettles and whatnot.

Biden starts (and destroys) campaign in one day!

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) officially kicked off his campaign today. However, it looks like he may have ended it today, too. From the New York Observer:

Senator Joseph Biden doesn’t think highly of the Iraq policies of some of the other Democrats who are running for President.

To hear him tell it, Hillary Clinton’s position is calibrated, confusing and “a very bad idea.” John Edwards doesn’t know what he’s talking about and is pushing a recipe for Armageddon in the Middle East. Barack Obama is offering charming but insubstantial fluff. And all of them are playing politics.
...
Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

The...what?? The "first" mainstream black guy who's smart and articulate and clean? Holy shizit, does anyone have any freakin' doubts as to how the MSM would have ravaged the plagiarist from Delaware had he been a Republican?

This story is in the New York Observer. As of this morning (and of course, that could change later on), most other MSM outlets are quieter than Monica Lewinsky in her presidential kneepads under the Oval Office desk. Were Biden a Republican, he'd already be "fried, died, and laid to the side", would he not? However, we can look at the MSM's failure to immediately report on this as further evidence of their leftist bias.

UPDATE (1/31/2007 - 4:35 p.m.): ABC News is finally reporting on it...and predictably blaming the evil "conservatives" for the fallout. Yeah, I'm sure Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh beamed the thoughts into Biden's brain. Then again, since he's already a known plagiarist, Biden could always say he was simply parroting someone else's words without proper attribution, right?