Vice President Joe Biden is playing defense Wednesday, apologizing profusely for referring earlier to shady bankers as “shylocks,” a term commonly associated with antisemitism.
His use of the term, which is a reference to the Jewish moneylender in William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” was “a poor choice of words,” Biden said.
Here’s what Biden originally said at an event Tuesday celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Legal Services Corporation: “That’s one of the things that he finds was most in need when he was over there in Iraq for a year … that people would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being … I mean these shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas.”
But it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to hear the vice president engaging in controversial and/or offensive speech. Indeed, he’s infamous for this sort of thing.
Here are some of his other “greatest hits”:
1. Joe Biden describes 7-11s and Indian-American workers
“I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking,” Biden said in 2008 when referring to his supposedly great relationship with Indian-Americans.
2. Biden warns: The GOP is going to put “y’all back in chains”
Biden warned a predominantly African-American crown during the 2012 presidential election that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the Republican Party wanted to put voters “back in chains.”
Romney has vowed that “in the first hundred days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules — unchain Wall Street!” Biden told the crowd.
“They’re going to put y’all back in chains,” he added.
3. Biden describes Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois
Biden in a 2007 New York Observer interview mused on the Iraq war, the economy and Barack Obama, the young Democratic senator from Illinois.
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man,” Biden said.
4. Biden once again wants to talk about Indians
Biden in 2012 accused Republican presidential candidate and former Gov. Mitt Romney of wanting to outsource good U.S. jobs to foreign countries, including India.
This attack, unfortunately, involved Biden adopting a faux Indian accent.
“How many times you get the call, ‘I like to talk to you about your … credit card,” he said, later dropping the fake accent. “It’s a little over done.
5. I can take any Southern lawmaker: I, too, am from a slave state!
Biden in 2006 boasted that he could take on any Southern lawmaker in a Democratic presidential primary because his home state of Delaware at one point was a “slave state.”
“You don’t know my state,” Biden said in a Fox News interview. “My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.”
The implication, of course, being that slavery is the thing that defines Southern lawmakers, including former Presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson.
BONUS: Biden asks a man in a wheelchair to stand up and be recognized (not controversial, but funny)
Biden at a 2008 campaign rally in Missouri cheered on state senator Chuck Graham, asking that the state lawmaker stand up and be recognized by the enthusiastic crowd.
“Stand up Chuck, let ’em see you!” Biden said
Problem is, Graham is wheelchair-bound and has been ever since he got into a car accident as a teenager.
