I know Joe Biden. He is among the proudest Irish Americans I know.
Calling him out on an anti-Irish remark, as some are trying to do, is absurd.
He made a joking comment “I may be Irish but I’m not stupid” to Senator Lindsey Graham when an attractive Irish American relative or friend of Graham introduced herself and Biden got her to pose with him.
Joe likes the ladies, is what his comment was really saying.
It’s a classic Biden moment, full of blarney and harmless fun.
When you meet Joe Biden he is effusive, funny and always warm.
He is the antithesis of President Obama, who is cool, aloof, calculated.
Biden is none of those things in public. He grabs everyone. He laughs.
At a Vice Presidential barbecue last summer he was chased around the residence garden by kids with water guns for at least an hour. He came back sprayed with water everywhere and laughing away.
I introduced him to my wife's first cousin Peggy Egan a year back. She told him her mother was a huge fan.
Biden said get her on the phone.
Which is why 87 year old Nora Murphy was disturbed from her usual mandatory "Judge Judy" evening viewing in Mineola, NY by a call from the Vice President.
This is how the call went:
"Hi Nora this is Joe Biden."
"Joe who?," she asked.
"It’s me, the Vice President, Joe Biden."
"Niall is that you?"
"No It's Joe."
"No it’s not. It’s Niall, playing a joke."
Eventually he convinced her and he asked how all in the old country were.
Nora filled him in on all relevant matters in the townland of Rathmore near Killarney and then they hung up.
Nora Murphy still tells everyone about it.
Each time I meet with Joe Biden he tells me he‘s going to Ireland. I even reported it once, but so far no go.
That’s Joe Biden – take him at face value.
I’m sure he's like that with every other ethnic group. The bonhomie conceals one of the sharpest brains in American politics.
(One that will be considerably more exercised now that the Republicans control the Senate and House.)
But anti-irish?
You might as well accuse Maureen O'Hara of it.
Joe Finnegan Biden, whose grandmother told him Black and Tan stories, whose favorite political hero is Wolfe Tone, is not anti-irish
Anyone who suggests otherwise needs a brain transplant.
Comments