page_title: Joe Biden (The Onion)
section_title: Characterization
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Biden (The Onion) / Characterization
caption_attribution_description: A photo of my car I took myself
context_page_description: In the satirical newspaper The Onion, Joe Biden is a caricature of American politician Joe Biden. Also known as "Diamond Joe" or "Uncle Joe", The Onion's Biden has not always been a straightforward parody of the real Biden. Instead, he began as a distinct character with outrageous qualities who shared little in common with his source. The Onion variously portrayed Biden as a blue-collar "average Joe", an affable "goofy uncle", a muscle car driver, a raucous party animal, a petty criminal, and even a drug-dealing gang member—all while serving as the 47th vice president of the United States. The character became one of The Onion's most popular recurring features during the Obama presidency, garnering critical acclaim and large numbers of page views.
  Although Biden was mentioned in The Onion as early as 2006, he had not been the focus of an Onion piece until Obama's inauguration in January 2009. Staff writer Chad Nackers originated a distinctive version of Biden, which developed over the course of the real Biden's two terms as vice president between 2009 and 2017.
context_section_description: The Onion Biden is typically described as a blue-collar everyman with a taste for partying and debauchery. Often referred to by the nickname "Diamond Joe", the character loves hair metal and classic rock from the 1970s and 1980s. He drives a 1981 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and motorcycles. According to New York Times journalist Jeremy W. Peters, the Onion staff wrote Biden in "one of two molds: Boozy and brash, or slick and over-sexed." In 2013, the direction of the character took a turn in articles that depicted him as a criminal and gang member; this arc deepened the following year, as Biden became a drug dealer and user, particularly of cannabis. The character has an intense bromance with Obama, although it is not necessarily reciprocated.
  The Onion's Biden shares little in common with Biden's real life, career, or behavior; indeed, as Dave Itzkoff put it, the character shares little at all with "any version of established reality or fact." For instance, while the Onion's Biden is a binge drinker, the real Biden is a teetotaler. Unlike the Onion Biden's preference for the Trans Am, the real Biden said his car of choice is the Chevrolet Corvette—to which Nackers responded, "So that's the thing, he is into a muscle car still." The portrayal is almost entirely apolitical, especially compared to The Onion's more pointed satirizing of other major political figures. Joel Goldstein, a law professor and expert on vice presidential history, said that a likely reason for The 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.
  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 liberal populist corresponds to the character's blue-collar life. The Onion's Biden has much in common with Biden's image as a "goofy uncle" and his nickname "Uncle Joe". A headline like "Biden Loses Control of Butterfly Knife during Commencement Speech" is an extreme exaggeration of some of Biden's perceived traits, like his "reported gaffes and generally casual demeanor." Mark Leibovich said part of the character's plausibility stems from the contrast between Biden's image and those of his contemporaries, posing the rhetorical questions: "Would The Onion put a shirtless John 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 from Dave & Buster's restaurants ('following dozens of complaints from wait staff and numerous incidents')?" Brian Resnick, writing for The Atlantic, said both have a "larger-than-life" quality. In Nackers's view, the overlap where the "real personality converges with Diamond Joe" is that both have "a heart of gold".
  Compared to most comedic portrayals of Biden, The Onion's was unconventional in its almost complete detachment from his real attributes. Other comedians and satirists tended to portray Biden as a well-meaning buffoon prone to gaffes, exaggerating the politician's actual or perceived traits without making outlandish embellishments. Jim Downey—a comedian and longtime writer on Saturday Night Live—described the Onion 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. 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."
caption: "Diamond Joe" drives a 1981 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.
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