Joe Biden and Michael Scott: Separated at birth?

Two Guys From Scranton

Joe Biden and Michael Scott: Separated at birth?

By Kyle Smith,  November 6, 2008

Michael Scott is gently excruciating, politely off-kilter, a man of hidden shallows. He is blazingly, blaringly white. As he put it in the diversity-training episode of The Office that set the tone for so much of what was to follow: “How come Chris Rock can do a routine and everybody finds it hilarious and ground-breaking and then I go and do the exact same routine, same comedic timing, and people file a complaint to Corporate? Is it because I’m white and Chris is black?”

As played, often brilliantly, by Steve Carell on NBC’s The Office, which has had a quality uptick this year after a wearying fourth season of forced shtick, Michael isn’t exactly a villain or even a jerk. He’s not quite a buffoon. He’s a social klutz, a failed mentor-comedian who can never get the laughs to fall in the right place. Or properly mentor anyone.

Michael, the suzerain of the Scranton office of the dismal Dunder Mifflin paper company, doesn’t give orders but tries to build support. He wants — needs — you to like him. He’s really the mayor of his little cubicle village, a politician. Which politician? One in particular comes to mind: the other eminent Scrantonian of our time, Joe Biden.

Michael’s gaffes aren’t Bushian malapropisms, usually. (There are exceptions: “I grabbed one. And it fit. So I don’t think that this is totally just a woman’s suit. At the very least, it’s bisexual.”) Normally he manages to get out the words he is trying to get out. You always know where he’s going. The mesmerizing comic power is in the weirdness that happens along the way.

Take the September 2007 debate in which Biden, trying to encourage a largely black audience to get tested for AIDS, first went too far, then went farther. “I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS. There’s no shame in getting tested for AIDS.” As Biden rambled, the audience began to murmur, then to hoot. No one had previously guessed that the two men’s mutual affection had blossomed so fully.

Obama broke in to make it clear he understood what everyone was thinking: “I just got to make it clear — I got tested with Michelle.”

How hard it is to picture Joe Biden using this Michael Scott-ism: “Um, let me ask you, is there a term besides Mexican that you prefer? Something less offensive?” Told “Mexican isn’t offensive,” Michael replies, “Well, it has certain connotations.” Talking about Iowa vs. D.C. schools, Biden said, “There’s less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with.” Certain connotations.

In trying to express support for cultural diversity, Michael Scott thought it was a good idea to play-act the part of an immigrant from South Asia who spoke at high pitch and said, “Oh! Welcome to my convenience store. Would you like some googi googi? I have some very delicious googi, googi, only 99 cents plus tax. Try my googi, googi.” In June 2006, Biden said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” It’s the “I’m not joking” part that makes it so perfectly Scottian — the little bite of the shovel as he digs himself deeper.

Like Michael’s, Biden’s heart is in (approximately) the right place. Each is, at some level, wrestling with his own most unfortunate impulses, but both of them are doing the best they can to compensate for it. Consider Biden’s most famous gaffe, about his eventual running mate: “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.” In his subsequent clarification, you can hear that shovel: “He’s fresh. He’s new. He’s smart. He’s insightful. And I really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the world ‘clean.’” It’s the woundedness that’s hilarious. Biden just can’t figure out how it can possibly be an insult to call Barack Obama “clean,” because it’s almost the right word, just as “bisexual” is almost the right word for Michael’s luckless choice of clothing.

“Hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard coal miner — anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania, that’s where I was born and raised,” Biden said to mine workers in Virginia on Sept. 20. The Scottian moment here is at the start: he hopes no one in an audience of coal miners will hold against him a shameless pandering calculated applause line that nevertheless turns out to be such a bizarre lie that stunned, awkward silence is the only appropriate response.

Both Scrantonians share an ardent love of history and an ability to avoid micromastery of the details. “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed,” Biden said in September, mangling two facts at once. Michael Scott, meeting a Ben Franklin impersonator: “I would say you are probably one of the sexiest presidents ever.” Replied the other man, “Well, actually, I never was president.” Michael Scott: “Yes, but Ben Franklin was.” One of Scott’s most-loved remarks is on Abraham Lincoln: “Abraham Lincoln once said that if you’re a racist, I will attack you with the north.” Hilarious. Yet — not all that far off.

Biden has gotten that big promotion, so he and Michael will continue to have one more not-insignificant thing in common. Everywhere Michael Scott goes, seemingly until the end of his days at Dunder Mifflin, there always seems to be a camera in his face. The poor guy just can’t get away with anything.

Kyle Smith is a contributing editor to Culture11.