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INFECTS BIDEN  VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ...What? Me worry? Nah! |
“You Know” Bugaboo
Victimizes Vice President
of TheColumnists.com
You know, Vice President Joe Biden is a regular guy, you know. He is, you know, a baseball fan. He played baseball as a kid, you know, and is pretty entertaining talking about it, you know, because he is, you know, self deprecatory. Yes, a regular guy, you know.
Biden showed up as a guest during the ESPN cablecast of the Yankees opening game against the Orioles in Baltimore. He was on for an inning with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. In that time he almost challenged all records for the constant use of “you know” in public.
Biden warmed up by using the phrase “you know” some 21 times in talking about how he was a Yankee fan growing up and that he rooted for Mickey Mantle and later Derek Jeter. He really swung for the fences when he spoke in praise of the troops in Iraq, rat-tat-tatting seven “you knows” in 20 seconds and topping that a few moments later when talking about the opening-game difficulties of the Yankees’ C.C Sabathia. He hit the “you know” gong 11 times in 25 seconds.
This is probably not a record because it didn’t rival Caroline Kennedy when she embarrassed herself campaigning for the New York Senate seat early this year. She was clocked using “you know” 138 times in one session with New York Times reporters and more than 200 times in a 30-minute interview with The New York Daily News. She seemingly couldn’t get out from under the scorn that generated; she soon withdrew as a candidate for the Senate seat.
There are no official records for the use of “you know.” But Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC rogue, had something of a go at it in his earlier days as a sportscaster. I first became aware of Olbermann when he would trumpet a new champion for frequent use of “you know” in the shortest amount of time.
Olbermann had pretty easy pickings because he was essentially monitoring athletes. It didn’t matter if they were college graduates or not, the air turned blue with “you knows” when Olbermann played recordings of choice interviews. “Aha, a new champion,” he would chortle, and play the latest abuser of the language.
His record holder was Geese Aubie of The Harlem Globetrotters with eight "you knows" in 13 seconds. "It stands as a moment in sports history," Olbermann said at the time with a touch of reverence in his voice.
Olbermann has gone on to more significant things. I think, wisely, he stopped the feature because he was coming up with too many unlettered athletes who were too easy prey for his lampooning.
I like Biden even if he made me wince with those “you knows”, but I think I would like his wife more. Biden noted that though he grew up in Scranton as a Yankee fan and was hated by everybody in his neighborhood, his wife, Jill, who grew up outside Philadelphia, was a dyed-in-the-wool Philly fan. So much so, he said, that she wouldn’t go to the Yankee-Oriole game with him, but preferred to go to the Phils’ opener.
I prefer loyalty to the home team over being a front-runner (the Yankees always won in those days). And I like to think that Dr. Jill Biden would do better in any baseball interview on television because she would have more respect for the language. She has been teaching English composition at a Delaware Community College and was a reading specialist and English teacher in public schools for 13 years.
Now that I think of it, maybe his wife ought to be sit down with her vice president husband and work on his “you knows”-you know.
I did look with interest when Google turned up an interview Olbermann did with Biden after one of the presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain.
I counted 10 “you knows” by Biden in a 20 minute interview. Hardly worthy of record-keeping note.
And let it be noted as well that in an interview on "60 Minutes" a few weeks after his Baltimore ramble, Biden limited himself to a mere four "you knows" in 20 minutes. Perhaps it was the chance to be one of the baseball guys that loosened his tongue and assaulted our ears on Opening Day in Baltimore.
After completing this piece, I have been paying closer attention to tube sports interviews. My wife says to me, "Why do you keep wincing?"
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted May 4, 2009.
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