We took Vice President Joe Biden to task in 2009 when he use the term “black shirts” to refer to Bush Administration officials that oversaw labor issues. They weren’t impartial referees wearing striped shirts, Biden told labor audiences, they were wearing “black shirts.” (Shopfloor, “‘Black Shirts’ – Just Words or Scripted Talking Points for VP Biden?”
 and “Card Check: Vice President Biden Calls Somebody ‘Black Shirts’.”)

The term black shirt has an ugly history and its use, however innocently, in a political context suggests you view your critics as fascists.

Since the summer of 2009, we hadn’t heard the Vice President utter the “black shirt” slur again — until last evening on the AFL-CIO sponsored telephone call with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Richard Trumka, the union president. There it was again, thrown out amid a wide range of over-the-top comments and pro-labor exhortations. (Audio)

Thankfully, we were not the only one to notice the return of the black shirts. Michael Gonzalez writes today at National Review Online’s The Corner blog, “No ‘Biden Will Be Biden’ Free Pass for the Veep“:

[Biden] says that the people who worked at the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board during the Bush administration were “wearing black shirts.”

Whatever was the vice president referring to? We’ve asked his office for a clarification, but have received no response in the past four hours. His office owes those people either an explanation or an apology, lest they believe that a sitting vice president of the United States meant to compare the people who worked in the last administration to Benito Mussolini’s paramilitary brutes….

There is a regretful tendency in Washington to dismiss what the vice president says with a shrug and say, “Biden will be Biden.” But Mr. Biden is not some loveable if overeager golden retriever who will overturn the china from time to time or do something worse to the carpet. He’s our vice president, and some decorum should be expected.

Absolutely right. After all the lectures on rhetorical tone and “civility,” it’s galling to hear the Vice President of the United States of America use such inflammatory terms for people who just disagree with him. Please referee your rhetoric and hang up the black shirts, Mr. Vice President.

We took note last week of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks to the political and legislative conference of the Communications Workers of America, checking to see what he had to say about the Employee Free Choice Act. (Transcript.)

Amid the expected exhortation, one phrase jumped out when the Vice President attacked union opponents generally and the Bush-era National Labor Relations Board specifically for being biased against union organizers.

You know, the National Labor Relations Act says we should “encourage” – paraphrase – “encourage” unions, not mandate them, encourage them. Why? It’s good for the economy. It’s gotten lopsided, folks.

The guys who were supposed to be wearing striped shirts have been wearing black shirts the last eight years. We don’t have referees out there doing it the right way. We’re switching out the shirts, because we’re switching out the people wearing the shirts.

Black shirts? Black shirts? That’s the term used to describe the Italian paramilitary squads and bully boys who helped Mussolini’s rise to power after WWI. (Oswald Mosely’s fascists in England were also known by the term.) If you call someone a “black shirt” you’re calling him a fascist.

We chalked the use of the term up to rhetorical haste, a confusion of black hats — bad guys — and striped shirts — referees. True, you would think someone with vast foreign policy experience would be sensitive to a term like black shirt. Still, a mistake.

But the Vice President has used the term in other speeches to union groups. It’s obviously part of his stump union speech. At some point he or his speech writer said, “Yeah, black shirts. That’s good. Put that in.”

From Vice President Biden’s remarks to the 2009 Legislative Conference Of The American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, May 12, 2009:

There has been a steady drumbeat. The guys wearing striped shirts were wearing black shirts, not striped shirts as referees. They’ve done anything administratively, legislatively and creatively for someone who wants to join a union to join a union.

Black shirts AND drumbeats.

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