Joe Biden (also known as "Diamond Joe" or "Uncle Joe") was a recurring fictionalizedcharacterization of American politicianJoe Biden in satirical online newspaperThe Onion. Between 2009 and 2019,The Onion staff consistently portrayed Biden as an outrageous character who shared almost nothing with his namesake besides the title ofvice president of the United States. Instead, the publication portrayed Biden as ablue-collar "average Joe", an affable "goofy uncle", amuscle car driver, an avid fan of 1980shair metal, a raucous party animal, a shameless womanizer, a recidivist petty criminal, and a drug-dealing outlaw. The Biden character became one ofThe Onion's most popular features during theObama presidency, garnering critical acclaim and a large readership.
Onion writer-editor Chad Nackers originated the newspaper's distinctive version of Biden, which its staff developed over the course of the real Biden's two terms as vice president. Nackers took inspiration from his upbringing in Midwestern Wisconsin and, more loosely, from aspects of Biden's personality and public face. AlthoughThe Onion had mentioned Biden's name as early as 2006, he was not treated as the primary subject of an item in the newspaper untilObama's (and his) first inauguration in January 2009. The first full-length treatment of the Biden character was a May 2009 article titled "Shirtless Biden WashesTrans Am inWhite House Driveway". The character subsequently appeared in more than 50Onion articles, as well as numerous videos and other media.
Despite the extreme differences between the fictional character and the real politician,The Onion was regarded as having a significant, mostly positive influence on Biden's public image. Commentators noted that the character likely reinforced public perceptions of Biden as a political figure withpopulist working-class appeal and a good-natured, easy-going disposition. The real Biden made several public comments noting his enjoyment of his characterization inThe Onion. In 2016,Mitch McConnell referenced the character on the Senate floor in a speech tributing the departing vice president amid thepresidential transition of Donald Trump.
Early reception for the character was generally enthusiastic. As the2020 Democratic primaries and Biden's2020 presidential campaign got underway,The Onion attracted criticism for the character's detachment from reality and its distraction from the real Biden. FormerOnion editorJoe Garden wrote a self-critical op-ed on the subject in May 2019. While Garden still felt the caricature had been funny, he expressed regret that it had failed to provide more meaningful commentary on the politician's record and what Garden found to be substantive shortcomings. After reviving the "Diamond Joe" version of Biden in its coverage of theprimaries for one final article,[1]The Onion retired the character. Since mid-2019, the publication's parodies of Biden have drawn more closely from real-world developments.
The Onion is an American publication thatparodies traditionalnewspapers andsatirizes current events. Founded in 1988 inMadison, Wisconsin as a weekly satiricalprint newspaper, it beganpublishing online in 1996 and discontinued its print edition in 2013.[3] Articles inThe Onion often lampoon real-world public figures and events using fictitious elements.The Onion had a few noteworthy instances of consistent characterizations over time prior to Biden, such as portrayals ofBill Clinton andBob Dole in the 1990s.[4]
Chad Nackers, the writer who created the Biden character, joinedThe Onion in 1997. By 2017, he had been on staff longer than anyone else in the paper's history.[5]
Prior to becoming vice president in 2009, Biden was not heavily featured inThe Onion. His few early appearances did not reflect the distinctive traits of the later character. The earliest mention of Biden was published in August 2006, during the early period of the2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries. With the headline "Critics Accuse Joe Biden of Running for President for Political Reasons", the article was based on a nonspecific premise that did not rely on any aspect of the real Biden's personality or career and, in principle, could have been written using any candidate as its subject.[6]
Biden rarely appeared inThe Onion until thefirst inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. On that day, the newspaper published the headline "Joe Biden Shows Up to Inauguration With Ponytail".
Even after Biden wasselected as Obama's running mate, he was only occasionally mentioned inThe Onion. However, Nackers said that the candidate's public appearances as Obama's running mate—especially, in Nackers's words, the "shit-eating grin he had" at those appearances—began to provide a "spark" of inspiration for the character.[7] Nackers felt that Biden's easygoing persona struck a dramatic contrast with the more intense, sinister public perception of his predecessorDick Cheney.[5] Asked about the genesis of the character,The Onion's founding editorScott Dikkers said Biden had "this great inappropriate, older buddy wild child kind of vibe."[8] Nackers also drew inspiration from his own "strong connection to blue-collar life" and upbringing inAppleton,Wisconsin. When writing Biden articles, Nackers would play music by bands likeMötley Crüe andWhite Lion to evoke memories and details that could inform the character—a techniqueThe Washington Post compared tomethod acting.[5]
The first appearance of the Biden character coincided with thefirst inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, whenThe Onion ran the headline "Joe Biden Shows Up to Inauguration With Ponytail" paired with amanipulated image of Biden sporting a long blondponytail, without an accompanying article.[9] The full-fledged character debuted on May 5, 2009, in the article "Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am in White House Driveway".[10]
During Biden's first year in office,The Onion published a few articles that depicted him as a more traditional vice president, including a spoof on theNational Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation (titled "Biden Pardons Single Yam in Vice-Presidential Thanksgiving Ritual"),[11] but by 2010 the writing staff had settled on exclusively using Nackers's "virtually unrecognizable" take on the character. Soon, the newspaper's editors had so many jokes based on the character that there was a backlog of rejected pitches.[12]
TheOnion's Biden is typically described as ablue-collareveryman with a taste for partying and debauchery. Often referred to by the nickname "Diamond Joe", the character loveshair metal and classic rock from the 1970s and 1980s. He drives a 1981Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and motorcycles. He also noticeably hastattoos.[13] According toNew York Times journalistJeremy W. Peters, theOnion staff wrote Biden in "one of two molds: Boozy and brash, or slick and over-sexed."[12] In 2013, the direction of the character took a turn in articles that depicted him as a criminal andgang member; this arc deepened the following year, as Biden became adrug dealer anduser, particularly ofcannabis.[14] The character has an intensebromance with Obama, although it is not necessarily reciprocated.[15]
TheOnion's Biden shares little in common with Biden's real life, career, or behavior; indeed, asDave Itzkoff put it, the character shares little at all with "any version of established reality or fact."[16] For instance, while theOnion's Biden is a binge drinker, the real Biden is ateetotaler.[17] Unlike theOnion Biden's preference for the Trans Am, the real Biden said his car of choice is theChevrolet Corvette—to which Nackers responded, "So that's the thing, he is into amuscle car still."[18] The portrayal is almost entirelyapolitical, especially compared toThe Onion's more pointed satirizing of other major political figures.[19] Joel Goldstein, a law professor and expert on vice-presidential history, said that a likely reason forThe Onion's divergent take on Biden is that the vice president holds an "awkward office" in a support role to the president's agenda, making it difficult to satirize in its own right.[18]
Most of the similarities between the two Bidens are in the broad outlines of their image and personality. In political terms, Biden's reputation as a liberalpopulist corresponds to the character's blue-collar life.[citation needed]The Onion's Biden has much in common with Biden's image as a "goofy uncle" and his nickname "Uncle Joe".[20] A headline like "Biden Loses Control ofButterfly Knife during Commencement Speech" is an extreme exaggeration of some of Biden's perceived traits, like his "reported gaffes and generally casual demeanor."[21]Mark Leibovich said part of the character's plausibility stems from the contrast between Biden's image and those of his contemporaries, posing therhetorical questions: "WouldThe Onion put a shirtlessJohn Kerry washing a Trans Am in the driveway of the State Department?Speaker Boehner wearing a ponytail at the Inauguration?Harry Reid getting banned for life fromDave & Buster's restaurants ('following dozens of complaints from wait staff and numerous incidents')?"[22] Brian Resnick, writing forThe Atlantic, said both have a "larger-than-life" quality.[23] In Nackers's view, the overlap where the "real personality converges with Diamond Joe" is that both have "aheart of gold".[5]
Compared to most comedic portrayals of Biden,The Onion's was unconventional in its almost complete detachment from his real attributes.[18] Other comedians and satirists tended to portray Biden as a well-meaningbuffoon prone togaffes, exaggerating the politician's actual or perceived traits without making outlandish embellishments.[24]Jim Downey—a comedian and longtime writer onSaturday Night Live—described theOnion parody as somewhat risky, because it implicitly relies on the audience's understanding of how dissimilar it is from the real Biden. For the humor to work, Downey said readers "have to know that it's completely wrong and arbitrary", but readers without an existing impression of Biden may believe that the parody is referencing some of his actual characteristics.[12] Similarly, the scholar Nicholas Holm said the character's humor comes from two things: the "sheer unlikeliness" of his traits, and the extreme contrast with "the gaffe-prone and folksy, but generally affable, public presentation of Biden."[14]
In his two terms as vice president between 2009 and 2017, Biden was the subject of more than 50 articles and multiple videos inThe Onion.[14] The newspaper would sometimes publish multiple articles about Biden in quick succession, as they did for Biden's appearance at the2016 Democratic National Convention.[26]
In January 2013,The Onion published thee-bookPresident of Vice: The Autobiography of Joe Biden as aKindle single throughAmazon'sKindle Store. The book, ostensibly anautobiography, gives a fictionalized account of Biden's life in the character's voice. Most of the book's plot deviates completely from Biden's life story—there is, for example, a description of Bidenmeeting God during some "mystical-ass experiences" in the summer of 1987—but it also offers alternate retellings of real incidents, like Biden's role inRobert Bork's unsuccessfulSupreme Court nomination.[29] As part of the promotion for the book,The Onion participated in an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") onReddit'sIAmA by responding in-character to user-submitted questions.[16]
On April 30, 2016,The Onion hosted a Biden-themed event to coincide with theWhite House Correspondents' Dinner. Titled "Diamond Joe Biden's Badass Balls-to-the-Wall Fiesta", the event was hosted at theNewseum in Washington, D.C.[30] The event featured anice sculpture of Biden riding aHarley-Davidson motorcycle and astring quartet playing renditions of hair-metal songs. Biden was invited to attend, but declined.[5] Sam Sanders atNPR reported that it was the "most popular" of the several unofficial events orbiting that year's Correspondents' Dinner.[31]
In one of the last Biden articles before theinauguration of Donald Trump, titled "Biden Sadly Realizes This Could Be Last Time He Throws Lit Firecracker Into Press Conference", the character remarked that it was the "end of an era, man."[32]
After Biden left office,The Onion mostly dropped the popular character but found similar breakout success with its portrayal ofDonald Trump's sons,Donald Jr. andEric, who are depicted partaking in childish misadventures as the "Trump boys".[33] Meanwhile,The Onion has portrayed Biden's successorMike Pence as stiff and uptight, which Nackers called a "weird reverse-Biden role".[33]
Chad Nackers, then–head writer forThe Onion in 2017[34]
Articles about Biden were some of the most-read articles onThe Onion's site of their time.[35]Analytical measurements ofweb traffic showed that, by November 2010, the first major Biden article ("Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am") had accumulated more than 500,000 page views, while the video "Biden Criticized for Appearing inHennessy Ads" had been viewed 450,000 times. The site drew about 7.5million unique visitors per month at that time, and as such the metrics for the Biden pieces were considered substantial.[12] Editor Will Tracy said Biden had been a "breakout character" and "fan favorite" during the Obama administration.[36]
The character has received widespread praise in the media.Mike Pesca, host of thepodcastThe Gist, said he considered theOnion's Biden to be one of "the great comic characters of our day" alongsideHomer Simpson,Gob Bluth andTobias Fünke ofArrested Development, andSelina Meyer ofVeep.[37] The month before the2012 presidential election,Slate named the character as the best parody of Biden—topping the animated Biden onSuperNews!,Jason Sudeikis's performances onSaturday Night Live, and Bill Barol's essay "My Name Is Joe Biden and I'll Be Your Server" inThe New Yorker.[38]Time magazine rankedThe Onion's Biden at number 7 on a list of the top 10 political memes of 2012.[39] WhenThe Onion discontinued its print edition in 2013, staffers at theLos Angeles Times named the Biden character among their favorite work published byThe Onion.[40]Marc Hogan atPitchfork listed "The 20 BestOnion Articles About Music" and included "Biden Huddling With Closest Advisers on Whether to Spend 200 Bucks onScorpions Tickets".[41]
In light of allegations of Biden's inappropriate physical contact with women
AfterLucy Flores published an essay in 2019 alleging Biden had inappropriately kissed and touched her, there was renewed attention on otherallegations that Biden has made inappropriate physical contact with women.[42] In turn, the increased attention on the issue prompted critical reassessments of theOnion's portrayal of Biden, particularly the character's interactions with women.Antonia Noori Farzan atThe Washington Post said some of the older headlines about Biden and women—like "Biden Invokes Freedom of Information Act to Find Out When Woman Gets off Work" and "Biden Invites Nation's Women to Tax Code Discussion at Private Mountain Chalet"—had "a sharper edge now that multiple women have said that Biden's close physical contact at public events made them feel uncomfortable."[43]
To some,The Onion had tacitly excused Biden's conduct or minimized the seriousness of inappropriate behavior toward women.The New Yorker's Katy Waldman wrote that theOnion's articles about Biden "madehypermasculine tropes look not only unthreatening but delightful" and "were the satirical equivalent of petting theLabrador on the head".[44] Gavin Fernando atThe New Zealand Herald noted Biden's tendency to touch women at public events had "rarely been criticised directly" in the media despite widespread awareness, highlighting anOnion story from 2009 that had "zoned in on his behavior towards women" yet all the while depicted him as "endearing and lovable."[45]
Conversely, other commentators felt that theOnion's jokes had called attention to the issue of Biden's inappropriate behavior toward women without necessarily glorifying or excusing his behavior. Joe Berkowitz atFast Company wrote that "[e]ven theOnion, whose memification of the Veep ... helped shore up affection for [him], couldn't help commenting on his attitudes toward women from time to time."[46]Maureen Callahan at theNew York Post saidThe Onion had "spoofed Biden's sleaziness as early as 2009", which she cited as proof that Biden's perceived inappropriate behavior had been in the public eye for a long time and would not be easy or morally acceptable to minimize or excuse.[47]Matthew Yglesias atVox said that the discussion about Biden and women had raised the "issue" of "what standard of conduct is acceptable for men in power" and that, on that topic, the overarching meaning ofThe Onion's long-running "joke" about Biden had been that the vice president "really was anold-school presence in the Obama White House".[42]
Biden publicly commented on the character on several occasions, generally indicating that he enjoyed theOnion articles about him. He also tended to express relief that the character was so radically different from his actual personality and poked fun at theOnion Biden's affinity for the Trans Am. Beyond his public comments,Onion staffers have said members of Biden's staff privately conveyed his enjoyment of the character to them.[48] Biden reacted with similar approval to most comedic portrayals of himself.[49]
Will Tracy, an associate editor atThe Onion, told theNew York Times in 2010 that theOffice of the Vice President had sent theOnion staff an email with the message "Keep it up. He really likes it." Tracy commented, "Apparently he's a fan." Biden's office denied being aware of any communication between the Vice President andThe Onion. When theTimes reporter requested an interview with Biden to confirm Tracy's statement,White House Press SecretaryJay Carney denied the request and replied, "Let me get this straight: You want to interview the vice president about stories about him inThe Onion? Well, I'll give you credit for trying."[12]
In a 2011 video interview withYahoo! News, Biden was asked aboutThe Onion and said most of his acquaintances and even members of the press tended to think of him as "a little bitsquare", but "now, I'm the philanderer. I think it's hilarious, the stuff they do on me."[50] He also said he was "flattered" that the character was "totally inconsistent with my personality."[51] AtHuffPost, Ross Luippold said his interview answer "seemed alternately tickled and confused by the mockery."[52]
Later that year,Car and Driver magazine asked Biden, "Sadly, we must ask about theOnion story. While shirtless, have you ever washed a 1981 Pontiac Trans Am in your driveway?" He replied, "You think I'd drive a Trans Am? I have been in my bathing suit in my driveway and not only washed my Goodwood-green 1967 Corvette but alsosimonized it. At least the Onion should have had me washing a Trans Amconvertible. I love convertibles."[53]
Eric Metaxas discussed the character with Biden at the 2012National Prayer Breakfast. Metaxas, who was the event's keynote speaker, was making small talk with Biden before his speech and asked the vice president if he was aware of theOnion pieces. According to Metaxas, Biden replied "yes, he had seen them, and he didn't mind them at all, because they were so obviously about someone who was completely different from what he was really like. ... Then he added, as a kind ofQ.E.D.: 'For one thing, I hate [Chevrolet]Camaros!'"[54]
When Reddit hosted an AMA for theOnion's Biden in January 2013, the @VPTwitter account tweeted the following:
Avatar of Office of VP Biden
Office of VP Biden
(@VP)
tweeted:
Q for@reddit AMA with my@TheOnion pal: A Trans-Am? Ever look under the hood of a Corvette?#imavetteguy –VP
The signature "–VP" was used to credit the tweet to Biden personally, rather than a member of his staff.[56] A photo of Biden standing beside a Chevrolet Corvette was attached to the tweet. The presidential account retweeted it soon after it was posted.[22] TheOnion's Biden did not reply to the real one's tweet, but it did respond to a Reddit user's question about the Corvette: "I think there's some imposter out there spreading bad shit about me. I'll tell ya right now, whatever they say nothing can come between me and my Zam."[57]
In an April 2016 interview withCNBC, Biden said that he was "not comfortable with goofy Uncle Joe ... And by the way, the so-called goofy Uncle Joe—if you notice, I beat every Republican in every poll when they thought I was running [in 2016]. You notice that my favorability was higher than anybody that's running for office in either party."[58] While this was not a direct comment onThe Onion, Biden's image as "goofy Uncle Joe" was closely associated with, and influenced by,The Onion.[59]
According to several academic commentators, Biden engaged with comedic portrayals of himself as apublic relations strategy. HistorianEdward L. Widmer said Biden's public embrace of theOnion and other parodies helped to signal his sense of humor and show "a quality of humanity."[22] Joel Goldstein, a law professor atSaint Louis University, said he believed Biden's reactions were likely sincere but, even if Biden actually dislikedThe Onion's portrayal, "the worst mistake [he] could make is being offended by it".[18] In the journalCritical Studies in Media Communication, Don J. Waisanen and Amy B. Becker wrote that Biden responded approvingly to comedic portrayals that reinforced his "folksy" public image, which further cultivated that perception.[60]
[T]he series is less concerned with naming and shaming comic flaws with the real Biden than it is with constructing an entirely independent self-sustaining comic persona. The humour ofThe Onion's ongoing coverage of womanising, thrill-seeking, drug-dealing Biden is the result of a self-perpetuating internal logic of ever-increasing goofiness that is constantly moving away from any engagement with the political existence of the real Biden. By the time 'Biden Lines Up Sweet Summer Gig Installing Above-Ground Swimming Pools' [in June 2016],The Onion has moved so far away from the original political context that despite the highly politicised nature of its subject, the joke has no grounding in the political sphere, let alone a critical politics.
Nicholas Holm, Humour as Politics: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Comedy(2017)[19]
There is a general consensus thatThe Onion made an impact on Biden's public image. In 2014, Jonathan Bernstein atBloomberg Opinion attributed Biden's image to a combination ofThe Onion's character and the vice president's own actions and personality. "All veeps become ridiculous; the only question is how", Bernstein wrote, and "once theOnion came up with the image, it seemed to fit really well."[61]
Scholar Byron C. Wallace suggestedThe Onion's patently absurd, often risqué characterization of Biden would be easily recognized as implausible by most readers and that, as such, their articles about Biden were presumptively less likely to be mistaken for real news than other, subtler satirical content.[62] On the other hand, the heightened contrast between the fiction and the real person has prompted concern that readers' impression ofThe Onion's Biden could supplant their impression of the real Biden.[63]The Onion editor Tracy remarked in 2012: "My sense is that we've done so much on him that our vision for our version of Joe Biden has, in some way, seeped into the nation's consciousness [and] people think our character of Joe Biden is somehow him."[36] In a profile of Biden forThe New Republic, George Blaustein asked:
Has a satire ever so effectively overwritten the image of a politician? ... The full corpus of Diamond Joe amounts to a powerful and paradoxical new origin story. It is intriguing that this fantasy caricature of Biden makes him an endearing outlaw when the real Biden's political legacy includes the1994 Crime Bill, and the terrible scale ofmass incarceration that followed from it.[2]
Nevertheless, it remains difficult to quantifyThe Onion's impact on Biden's image, and so the precise extent of the newspaper's influence is unclear.[43] Jeremy Gordon atThe Outline doubted the extent ofThe Onion's effect on Biden's popularity, noting that the website's audience had decreased in the preceding years and that its audience skewed younger and more liberal than Biden's base of predominantly older, moderate Democrats.[64] Conversely, historian Christine Wenc has argued thatThe Onion's dominance in its home state of Wisconsin helped Biden to win it as the third-closest state of the2020 United States presidential election.[65]
The Onion's Biden became a popularmeme and influenced perceptions of Biden inInternet culture, particularly during the Obama administration.[66] Seth Millstein at the women's magazineBustle rankedThe Onion character as the 13th best Biden meme (out of 15) and said it had "played an enormous role in shaping the public's perception of Biden."[67] Regarding Biden's chances of appealing toMillennial voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries,Peter Hamby atVanity Fair wrote that Biden may be "old, but thanks to theOnion and his Uncle Joe persona, he's already optimized for meme culture."[68]
In addition to becoming a meme in its own right,The Onion's Biden influenced other memes and online discourse about Biden, which frequently imagined him as a roguish goof paired with Obama as the more serious "straight man".[69] A viral tweet from Twitter user @blippoblappo played off this dynamic:
Avatar of blupman
blupman
(@blippoblappo)
tweeted:
REPORTER: Mr. President, what's your favoriteWu Tang album?
Brian Feldman atNew York magazine wrote that "Biden-joke pedants might point out that the butt-rock-loving Biden of theOnion would probably not be a Wu-Tang Clan fan," but @blippoblappo's tweet "nevertheless carries with it the same myth-making potency: an image that it feels more true than the actual truth."[71]
The character entered theCongressional Record on at least two occasions. During thepresidential transition of Donald Trump,Mitch McConnell referenced the character in a December 2016 speech to the Senate floor delivered in tribute to Biden. McConnell said, "WhenThe Onion ran a mock photo of him washing a Trans Am in the White House driveway shirtless, America embraced it. And so did he."[72]
In June 2019, while giving testimony to theHouse Intelligence Committee on the topic of "deepfake" imagery, former FBI agentClint Watts discussedThe Onion's manipulated photo of Biden washing a car shirtless.[73] Some members of Congress later pointed to theOnion image as an example of potential problems withmoderating deepfake imagery—namely, the difficulty of trying to distinguish betweensatire andfake news.[74]
FormerOnion editorJoe Garden (pictured in 2010) expressed regret over the paper's approach to Biden.
Joe Garden—a formerOnion writer and editor who left in 2012 after 19 years—publicly criticized the newspaper's portrayal of Biden in May 2019. After he tweeted some of his recent thoughts about the character,Vice published a full op-ed by Garden titled "Area Man Regrets Helping Turn Joe Biden into a Meme".[75]
In theVice piece, Garden wrote that he still believed the Biden pieces were funny in their light-hearted way. However, he had also come to believe they had failed as satire because"[i]nstead of viciously skewering a public figure who deserved scrutiny, we let him off easy".[76] In hindsight, he said, Biden's vocal approval of the character should have been ared flag indicating that their satire was ineffective. He compared their work to Trump's appearance as the host ofSaturday Night Live in 2015 andJimmy Fallon's interview with Trump onThe Tonight Show in 2016, both of which had been criticized as overly conciliatory treatments that downplayed what he felt wereinflammatory and racist aspects of Trump's messaging. Garden concluded:
I don't believeThe Onion's Biden is solely responsible for this early popularity of real-life Biden. We were just one small link in a chain of institutions that didn't scrutinize Biden closely enough. I wish we had looked more at his actual career in politics—which includesopposition to busing as a way to integrate schools and support for predatory financial institutions—and tried to really puncture him, rather than just turning him into a clown. We helped make him more likable by inventing a version of Biden that never existed.... As a guideline, if the people you're satirizing aren't mad, then you should dig deeper. I hope that my alma mater, and everyone else in comedy, follows this rule now that Diamond Joe is back.[76]
You can't understand what theOnion is today without first understanding the extent to which the outlet feels haunted by the ghost of Joe Biden. Or, more accurately, 'Joe Biden'.
The Onion briefly revived its fanciful version of Biden(pictured in May 2019), but subsequently took its satirical coverage of the candidate in a more critical and straightforward direction.
Shortly after Biden announcedhis 2020 presidential campaign in March 2019, the character briefly reemerged in a story titled "Biden Pulls Off Dusty Tarp Covering Old Campaign Motorcycle".[79] Since then,The Onion abandoned its formerly warm, fanciful characterization of Biden. Its subsequent satirical coverage of the candidate has become more critical and direct. Recent articles have tended to focus on real-world developments in the presidential race, such as his frequentgaffes, and issues like publicconcern over Biden's age and mental acuity.[80]
Noting the turn, secondary sources have cited late-2019Onion headlines like the following:
"Jill Biden"—Joe's wife—"Urges Democratic Voters to Ignore Which Candidates Are Mentally Sharp Enough to Finish Complete Sentences for Good of Party" (described as "just brutal" in the conservative websiteTownhall);[81]
"'Help! Help! Who Am I? Where Am I? Who Are You People?' Says Biden in Embarrassing Campaign Gaffe" (described as "devastating" by liberal punditAmanda Marcotte);[82]
"Biden Declares Self Only Candidate Who Can DefeatGeorge Bush in1988 Election" (dubbed the "best evidence [of] bad news for Team Biden" inNew York magazine).[83]
The list below includes the 76 headlines featuring the Joe Biden character published inThe Onion, with notes explaining certain dates, events, and some references to politics or pop culture. Most of the articles published from 2009 to 2016 were gathered fromThe Onion's compilation feature "The President of ViceArchived January 16, 2021, at theWayback Machine". It excludes Biden's out-of-character appearances before January 2009 and since March 2019.
Headlines were attached to one of the following types of content:
"News", a full article;
"News in Brief", a short article typically a paragraph long;
"News in Photos", a headline with an image but no article;
Multimedia content like video, audio ("Radio News"), or photo slideshow.
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Ice sculpture of Joe Biden on a motorcycle from the 2016 "Diamond Joe Biden's Badass Balls-to-the-Wall Fiesta" at theNewseum. Photo by Shannon Finney, atGetty Images.
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