BIDEN WAS BOOED AT EAGLES GAME?

In our most recent post regarding the “illegal forward pass” call in Sunday’s game between the Packers and the Vikings, we pointed out that NBC’s Al Michaels and John Madden failed to point out that Giants quarterback Eli Manning got away with an apparently clear case of intentional grounding last night in Philadelphia. As MDS points out, Michaels and Madden didn’t comment on the possible intentional grounding by Giants quarterback Eli Manning because they were talking about the presence of Vice President-elect Joe Biden in the owner’s box. The discussion included video of Biden with owner Jeffrey Lurie. And if the images of Biden broadcast by NBC were simultaneously displayed on the scoreboard at Lincoln Financial Field, the characterization by Dan Ghelston of the Associated Press that Biden was booed ignores the fact that the fans were in the process of loudly booing the failure of the officials to throw a flag on Manning. We’re not suggesting that Biden wouldn’t have been booed. In any non-partisan crowd, there will be people who like a given politician, and people who don’t. And the sound of booing often overtakes the sound of clapping. That said, it’s highly unlikely that a Scranton native with a blue-collar background would have been unanimously booed by people who live in an area that surely contributed significantly to last week’s election results in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and our guess is that Ghelston grossly misinterpreted the crowd’s reaction to the absence of a flag for intentional grounding as a statement of uniform disdain for the man who’ll become the Vice President of the United States in little over two months. UPDATE: Mark Eckel of the Trenton Times thinks that the boos were directed at Lurie, not Biden. SECOND UPDATE: Eagles fan Taco Bill has an inside look at Biden’s plan for avoiding future booing.