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‘The Onion’ Strikes Comic Gold With Biden SpoofsBy JEREMY W.
PETERS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/jeremy_w_peters/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Vice President Joseph R. Biden
Jr.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/joseph_r_jr_biden/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
has
never smashed a Whac-A-Mole game in a drunken fit. He has never invoked
Freedom of Information laws to find out a female federal employee’s work
schedule<http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-invokes-freedom-of-information-act-to-find-o,6827/>.
And to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he has never washed his car in the
White House driveway<http://www.theonion.com/articles/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-dri,2718/>
.

But to readers of The Onion <http://www.theonion.com/>, the satirical
newspaper and Web site, the vice president has done all of those things,
plus bounce a check for $39.50 to a liquor
store<http://www.theonion.com/articles/bounced-joe-biden-check-still-taped-up-in-delaware,18287/>
and star in advertisements for Hennessy
cognac<http://www.theonion.com/video/biden-criticized-for-appearing-in-hennessy-ads,14392/>
that
emphasize his international playboy swagger.

Political satire typically seizes on a public official’s foibles or flaws
and exaggerates them — Gerald R.
Ford<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/gerald_rudolph_jr_ford/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s
clumsiness, Bill
Clinton<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s
fast-food cravings, George W.
Bush<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s
malapropisms, for example. Turning the craft on its head, writers at The
Onion have created a caricature of the vice president that is entirely
incongruous with his public image. Of all Mr. Biden’s imperfections, being a
womanizer and a drunk are not on the list. In fact, he does not drink and
has been, by all accounts, a devoted husband and family man for more than 30
years.

The Onion’s portrayals of Mr. Biden began as traditional vice president
jokes (“Biden Pardons Single Yam in Vice-Presidential Thanksgiving
Ritual<http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-pardons-single-yam-in-vice-presidential-than,6998/>”)
but writers there had an epiphany last year when they discovered that
tweaking their caricature of the vice president into someone virtually
unrecognizable from his public persona — “Biden To Cool His Heels in Mexico
For a While,” read one headline — was comic gold.

The result has been endless fodder for Biden jokes — too many, in fact, for
The Onion to publish. So at a time when no major news media outlet has a
reporter dedicated solely to covering the vice president, writers at The
Onion are generating so many story ideas about Mr. Biden that editors have
to turn them down.

“We have a backlog of Biden jokes,” said Will Tracy, The Onion’s associate
editor. One idea Mr. Tracy said he had to nix: a spread by the vice
president in Playgirl inspired by Burt
Reynolds<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/108069/Burt-Reynolds?inline=nyt-per>,
whose nude pose for Cosmopolitan in 1972 on a bearskin rug became an emblem
of 1970s hedonism.

“We decided it was almost too big time for him,” Mr. Tracy said. “We like it
better when Joe Biden is doing very small-time stuff, like getting kicked
out of Dave & Buster’s, not appearing on the cover of a major national
magazine.”

The articles perform extremely well on The Onion’s Web site. Since the story
“Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am in White House
Driveway<http://www.theonion.com/articles/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-dri,2718/>”
went online last spring, it has generated over half a million page views.
The video “Biden Criticized for Appearing in Hennessy Ads” has been viewed
450,000 times since it appeared in January. For a site that receives 7.5
million unique visitors each month, those are considerable numbers.

The Onion’s “reports” on the vice president generally portray him in one of
two molds: Boozy and brash, or slick and over-sexed. There was a report
describing how he flouted a ban from all Dave & Buster’s restaurants
nationwide<http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-receives-lifetime-ban-from-dave-busters,17285/>.
“After he was barred from the Tempe, Ariz., location in 2007, the former
senator would reportedly do burnouts in the parking lot with his Trans Am
while waiting to pick up a waitress employed there at the time, a woman
identified only as ‘Candi,’ ” it said.

He has also been known to Dumpster dive. One article blamed him for bringing
a bedbug<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/b/bedbugs/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
infestation
to the White House after hauling in an old, discarded recliner from
the curb<http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-house-infested-with-bedbugs-after-biden-brin,7070/>
.

Then there is the womanizer who cockily refers to himself in the third
person, seduces ladies named Lexus, and stars in a $28 million Hennessy
advertising campaign (“Sensual, Powerful, Biden,” the tagline goes).

The randomness of it is precisely the point, writers said.

“People kept trying to peg him as a buffoon,” said Carol Kolb, head writer
for The Onion News Network, the comedy newspaper’s online video producer.
“We just abandoned that and put him in silly uniforms and had him opening a
crab shack.”

This kind of humor does pose a risk for the comedians writing it, because it
could easily fall flat with readers who are accustomed to more traditional
forms of satire. Even some of the boldest comedy writers said they would be
wary of trying it with their audiences.

“The risk of it sometimes for us is that to know, to appreciate what’s funny
about doing that with Biden, you have to know that it’s completely wrong and
arbitrary,” said Jim Downey, a writer for “Saturday Night
Live”<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/saturday_night_live/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
who
has written many of the show’s political sketches. “People in the audience,
even if they have no idea who Biden is, they might say, ‘Oh, I did not know
that he was a bit of a dirty dog.’ So it throws things off.”

But The Onion has doubled down on its caricatures, even hiring a body double
to pose in pictures so editors can Photoshop in Mr. Biden’s head to create
images of him, for example, washing his Trans Am — in cutoff jeans and no
shirt — on the South Lawn of the White House. The caption: “Vice President
Biden ditched a day of presiding over the Senate to ‘give the twin cannons
some sun.’ ”

According to Onion writers, Mr. Biden is good humored about the parodies.
They said they received word from one of the vice president’s associates
saying that Mr. Biden thought the articles were a riot. “We got an e-mail
saying: ‘Keep it up. He really likes it,’ ” Mr. Tracy said. “Apparently he’s
a fan.”

But Mr. Biden’s office said it was not aware of anyone on the vice
president’s staff who might have contacted The Onion to pass along his
approval. A spokesman for Mr. Biden, Jay Carney, said the vice president was
unavailable to be interviewed about his portrayal in The Onion.

“Let me get this straight: You want to interview the vice president about
stories about him in The Onion?” Mr. Carney asked, sounding at once amused
and dumbfounded by the request. “Well, I’ll give you credit for trying.”

Mr. Tracy said he and other Onion writers found something very malleable
about the vice president’s everyman persona. “You could see him in a
different context if he wasn’t famous, if you just moved him in a little
different direction.”

Ms. Kolb chimed in, “He could be living in a houseboat.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Mr. Tracy added.

And another idea for a new Biden parody was born.
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co