Political candidates can say some pretty wild stuff on the campaign trail. Who can forget when Georgia senate candidate Hershel Walker said, “I don’t want to be a vampire anymore. I want to be a werewolf.” And then there was Donald Trump’s bizarre digression when he explained he’d rather be electrocuted than be eaten by a shark. But President Joe Biden might have the best campaign story yet when he recently implied that cannibals ate his uncle.
You might be inclined to forgive Mr. Biden for making this inflammatory (and unsubstantiated) claim that Uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr. was eaten by cannibals, when maybe he was just remembering that his uncle used to say, “Campbell’s Soup is good eating!” Also, Biden is Irish and we Irish-Americans are known to skip over a pesky historical detail or two in the service of a good yarn.
In any case, Mr. Biden caused a diplomatically awkward moment recently when, campaigning in Pittsburgh, he remarked that, during World War II, his uncle’s aircraft, “got shot down in New Guinea and they never found his body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
That’s like saying your grandmother’s great-grandmother was passing through Salem, Massachusetts and was never heard from again because she was probably burned as a witch.
Not surprisingly, Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, James Marape took some offense at Biden’s suggestion that as late as World War II, his people were cannibals. He said that Biden’s anecdote “may have been a slip of the tongue, however my country does not deserve to be labeled as such.”
Speaking to The Guardian, University of Papua New Guinea lecturer Michael Kabuni suggested that characterizing his people as savages was insulting. He acknowledged that cannibalism had once existed in New Guinea, “But taking it out of context and implying that your (uncle) jumps out of the plane and somehow we think it’s a good meal is unacceptable.”
Of course, President Biden had not intended to offend the people of New Guinea. He was only trying to honor his uncle who had served in World War II. And by “served” I don’t mean…well, never mind. (And I’m certainly not about to exploit poor Uncle Finnegan’s fate to make some tasteless joke about giving new meaning to the term “Irish stew”.)
While Prime Minister Marape was holding Biden’s feet to the fire, he mentioned, “The remains of WW II lie scattered all over PNG….” In other words, isn’t it about time you cleaned up your mess?
It’s astonishing the things politicians will say into a microphone. Hillary Clinton once gave a detailed account of her 1996 landing into the Tuzla Air Base under sniper fire. It was a riveting story, but it never happened. Trump keeps claiming his father, Fred was born in Germany when records clearly show Fred was born in New York. On July 4, 2019, Trump regaled reporters at the White House with a history lesson about how the Continental Army “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War. When somebody pointed out the anachronism, Trump blamed it on a faulty teleprompter. But like Biden’s cannibal story, that was pretty hard to swallow.
Living in Iowa: Cannibals ate your…what?
May 2, 2024