It's hard to find a benchmark against which to compare remarks delivered by Vice President Joe Biden, but here's one from a past administration. In June 2004, Bush 43 Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted on the Senate Floor at the annual Senate photo op by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy had previously been flogging the left's phantasm over alleged "profiteering" by Halliburton, the company at which Cheney had served as Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000. At the end of a testy exchange, Cheney either said "(F-word) you" or "(F-word) yourself."
The Washington Post (go to the third of 22 pages at the link), the New York Times, and the Associated Press covered the story. A Taipei Times dispatch claiming to a blend of Times and AFP reporting actually contains the F-word. A Google News Archive search surfaces at least a dozen establishment press stories and commentaries which are still out there. However, I found almost no mainstream press stories covering what the father of slain Benghazi-defending hero Tyrone Woods claims that Biden said to him when the casket containing his son's remains returned to America (bold was in original):
JOE BIDEN TO FATHER OF FORMER NAVY SEAL KILLED IN BENGHAZI: ‘DID YOUR SON ALWAYS HAVE BALLS THE SIZE OF CUE BALLS?’
The father of one of the former Navy SEALs killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya says President Barack Obama wouldn’t even look him in the eye and Vice President Joe Biden was disrespectful during the ceremony when his son’s body returned to America. He also says the White House’s story on the attack doesn’t pass the smell test.
Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, called into “The Glenn Beck Program” on TheBlazeTV Thursday and recounted his interactions with the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden at the ceremony for the Libya victims at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He told host Glenn Beck that what they told him, coupled with new reports that indicate the Obama administration knew very good and well, almost immediately, that a terrorist attack was occurring in Benghazi, make him certain that the American people are not getting the whole truth.
Vice President Biden, as he has become known to do, reportedly made a wildly inappropriate comment to the father who had just lost his hero son.
Woods said Biden came over to his family and asked in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”
If this claim were refutable, I believe the Vice President's office would have attempted to do so by now, and it hasn't. The "loud and boisterous" element just cited sort of closes off that avenue.
Later in the Blaze report just linked, Woods described his encounter with President Obama at the same ceremony:
“When he finally came over to where we were, I could tell that he was rather conflicted, a person who was not at peace with himself,” Woods said. “Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye, his eyes were over my shoulder.”
“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”
Beck said he wanted to give the president “the benefit of the doubt,” and asked Woods how he could be sure that Obama wasn’t just uncomfortable or nervous during their conversation. Woods said it was Obama’s “demeanor.”
Completing the trifecta of administration awkwardness and obfuscation, Woods claims that Hillary Clinton told him that the U.S. would "make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted."
Google News searches on "Charles Woods" (in quotes) and "Biden cue" (not in quotes) returned only two results from U.S. establishment press outlets, a blog post at US News and an outstanding column at the Orange Country Register by the incomparable Mark Steyn. The UK Daily Mail is on the story. Separate searches on "Charles Woods" at the Associated Press and the News York Times (not in quotes and in quotes, respectively) are similarly barren.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
