Post #8: Diamond Joe: Bubba's viral successor

Along with SNL, (see my post #5) The Onion is one of the few mainstream outlets for satire in the national US media stream.  It has weathered the transition to the online age well, since its humor has almost always been easily boiled down to a headline and an image (the full articles are redundant and overlong, which I suppose is part of the joke).

In recent years, echoing SNL's early take on Bill Clinton, The Onion has seized on Joe Biden's blue-collar appeal and crafted an alternate, caricatured version.  Where the Hartman Clinton was simply exaggerated, the Onion "Diamond Joe" Biden has become an all-purpose sleaze ball, a 1970s drug dealer, hustler and car enthusiast who essentially never grew up.  The articles started shortly after Obama and Biden's 2008 election and gained their essential form with Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway from May 2009.

The Onion has an entire channel dedicated to Joe Biden articles, which are varied and uniformly hilarious.

Once again, I am drawn to satire that seizes on the characterization and personae that have become so essential to political campaigning.  While most political theatre sticks close to the issues and the real urgency around them, actual politicians and campaigns stray far from those lines, making their arguments on appeals to emotion and portrayals of themselves as a certain kind of character.  Usually the kind of guy you'd want to have a cold one with as he washes his Trans Am.