Joe Biden (also known as "Diamond Joe" or "Uncle Joe") was a recurring fictionalized characterization of American politician Joe Biden in satirical online newspaper The Onion. Between 2009 and 2019, The Onion staff portrayed Biden as a blue-collar "average Joe", an affable "goofy uncle", a muscle car driver, an avid fan of 1980s hair metal, a raucous party animal, a shameless womanizer, a recidivist petty criminal, and a drug-dealing outlaw. The Biden character became one of The Onions most popular features during the Obama presidency, garnering critical acclaim and a large readership.
Onion writer-editor Chad Nackers originated the newspaper's distinctive version of Biden, which its staff developed over the course of the real Biden's two terms as vice president. Nackers took inspiration from his upbringing in Midwestern Wisconsin and, more loosely, from aspects of Biden's personality and public face. Although The Onion had mentioned Biden's name as early as 2006, he was not treated as the primary subject of an item in the newspaper until Obama's (and his) first inauguration in January 2009. The first full-length treatment of the Biden character was a May 2009 article titled "Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am in White House Driveway". The character subsequently appeared in more than 50 Onion articles, as well as numerous videos and other media.
Despite the extreme differences between the fictional character and the real politician, The Onion was regarded as having a significant, mostly positive influence on Biden's public image. Commentators noted that the character likely reinforced public perceptions of Biden as a political figure with populist working-class appeal and a good-natured, easy-going disposition. The real Biden made several public comments noting his enjoyment of his characterization in The Onion. In 2016, Mitch McConnell referenced the character on the Senate floor in a speech tributing the departing vice president amid the presidential transition of Donald Trump.
Early reception for the character was generally enthusiastic. As the 2020 Democratic primaries and Biden's 2020 presidential campaign got underway, The Onion attracted criticism for the character's detachment from reality and its distraction from the real Biden. Former Onion editor Joe Garden wrote a self-critical op-ed on the subject in May 2019. While Garden still felt the caricature had been funny, he expressed regret that it had failed to provide more meaningful commentary on the politician's record and what Garden found to be substantive shortcomings. After reviving the "Diamond Joe" version of Biden in its coverage of the primaries for one final article, The Onion retired the character. Since mid-2019, the publication's parodies of Biden have drawn more closely from real-world developments.
Background
Joe Biden is an American retired politician. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009. As the running mate of Barack Obama, Biden was elected vice president of the United States in 2008 and 2012. In his third presidential campaign—following previous efforts in 1988 and 2008—he was elected President of the United States in 2020. He served as the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025.
The Onion is an American publication that parodies traditional newspapers and satirizes current events. Founded in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin as a weekly satirical print newspaper, it began publishing online in 1996 and discontinued its print edition in 2013.; . Articles in The Onion often lampoon real-world public figures and events using fictitious elements. The Onion had a few noteworthy instances of consistent characterizations over time prior to Biden, such as portrayals of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in the 1990s.; ; .
Chad Nackers, the writer who created the Biden character, joined The Onion in 1997. By 2017, he had been on staff longer than anyone else in the paper's history.
Origin and development Prior to becoming vice president in 2009, Biden was not heavily featured in The Onion. His few early appearances did not reflect the distinctive traits of the later character. The earliest mention of Biden was published in August 2006, during the early period of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries. With the headline "Critics Accuse Joe Biden of Running for President for Political Reasons", the article was based on a nonspecific premise that did not rely on any aspect of the real Biden's personality or career and, in principle, could have been written using any candidate as its subject.; .
Even after Biden was selected as Obama's running mate, he was only occasionally mentioned in The Onion. However, Nackers said that the candidate's public appearances as Obama's running mate—especially, in Nackers's words, the "shit-eating grin he had" at those appearances—began to provide a "spark" of inspiration for the character. Nackers felt that Biden's easygoing persona struck a dramatic contrast with the more intense, sinister public perception of his predecessor Dick Cheney. Asked about the genesis of the character, The Onions founding editor Scott Dikkers said Biden had "this great inappropriate, older buddy wild child kind of vibe." Nackers also drew inspiration from his own "strong connection to blue-collar life" and upbringing in Appleton, Wisconsin. When writing Biden articles, Nackers would play music by bands like Mötley Crüe and White Lion to evoke memories and details that could inform the character—a technique The Washington Post compared to method acting.
The first appearance of the Biden character coincided with the first inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, when The Onion ran the headline "Joe Biden Shows Up to Inauguration With Ponytail" paired with a manipulated image of Biden sporting a long blond ponytail, without an accompanying article.; ; . The full-fledged character debuted on May 5, 2009, in the article "Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am in White House Driveway".; .
During Biden's first year in office, The Onion published a few articles that depicted him as a more traditional vice president, including a spoof on the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation (titled "Biden Pardons Single Yam in Vice-Presidential Thanksgiving Ritual"),; . but by 2010 the writing staff had settled on exclusively using Nackers's "virtually unrecognizable" take on the character. Soon, the newspaper's editors had so many jokes based on the character that there was a backlog of rejected pitches.
Characterization
The Onion's Biden is typically described as a blue-collar everyman with a taste for partying and debauchery. Often referred to by the nickname "Diamond Joe", the character loves hair metal and classic rock from the 1970s and 1980s. He drives a 1981 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and motorcycles. He also noticeably has tattoos.; ; ; . According to New York Times journalist Jeremy W. Peters, the Onion staff wrote Biden in "one of two molds: Boozy and brash, or slick and over-sexed." In 2013, the direction of the character took a turn in articles that depicted him as a criminal and gang member; this arc deepened the following year, as Biden became a drug dealer and user, particularly of cannabis. The character has an intense bromance with Obama, although it is not necessarily reciprocated.
The Onions Biden shares little in common with Biden's real life, career, or behavior; indeed, as Dave Itzkoff put it, the character shares little at all with "any version of established reality or fact." For instance, while the Onions Biden is a binge drinker, the real Biden is a teetotaler. Unlike the Onion Biden's preference for the Trans Am, the real Biden said his car of choice is the Chevrolet Corvette—to which Nackers responded, "So that's the thing, he is into a muscle car still." The portrayal is almost entirely apolitical, especially compared to The Onions more pointed satirizing of other major political figures. Joel Goldstein, a law professor and expert on vice-presidential history, said that a likely reason for The Onions divergent take on Biden is that the vice president holds an "awkward office" in a support role to the president's agenda, making it difficult to satirize in its own right.
Most of the similarities between the two Bidens are in the broad outlines of their image and personality. In political terms, Biden's reputation as a liberal populist corresponds to the character's blue-collar life. The Onions Biden has much in common with Biden's image as a "goofy uncle" and his nickname "Uncle Joe".; . A headline like "Biden Loses Control of Butterfly Knife during Commencement Speech" is an extreme exaggeration of some of Biden's perceived traits, like his "reported gaffes and generally casual demeanor." Mark Leibovich said part of the character's plausibility stems from the contrast between Biden's image and those of his contemporaries, posing the rhetorical questions: "Would The Onion put a shirtless John Kerry washing a Trans Am in the driveway of the State Department? Speaker Boehner wearing a ponytail at the Inauguration? Harry Reid getting banned for life from Dave & Buster's restaurants ('following dozens of complaints from wait staff and numerous incidents')?" Brian Resnick, writing for The Atlantic, said both have a "larger-than-life" quality. In Nackers's view, the overlap where the "real personality converges with Diamond Joe" is that both have "a heart of gold".
Compared to most comedic portrayals of Biden, The Onions was unconventional in its almost complete detachment from his real attributes. Other comedians and satirists tended to portray Biden as a well-meaning buffoon prone to gaffes, exaggerating the politician's actual or perceived traits without making outlandish embellishments.; . Jim Downey—a comedian and longtime writer on Saturday Night Live—described the Onion parody as somewhat risky, because it implicitly relies on the audience's understanding of how dissimilar it is from the real Biden. For the humor to work, Downey said readers "have to know that it's completely wrong and arbitrary", but readers without an existing impression of Biden may believe that the parody is referencing some of his actual characteristics. Similarly, the scholar Nicholas Holm said the character's humor comes from two things: the "sheer unlikeliness" of his traits, and the extreme contrast with "the gaffe-prone and folksy, but generally affable, public presentation of Biden."
Notable appearances (2009–2017)
In his two terms as vice president between 2009 and 2017, Biden was the subject of more than 50 articles and multiple videos in The Onion. The newspaper would sometimes publish multiple articles about Biden in quick succession, as they did for Biden's appearance at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
One of the Onions Twitter accounts, @OnionPolitics, live-tweeted the October 11, 2012 vice presidential debate between Biden and Republican candidate Paul Ryan. The website ran four stories on Biden that day along with a manipulated image of Biden wearing his "lucky debate suit", which was a jacket similar to Michael Jackson's Thriller jacket that exposed his hairy chest.; ; .