Cannibal comment is a reminder for Biden to mind his mouth ahead of vote
Unsure on a bicycle, unsteady on two legs, and vulnerable over his inflation record, at least Joe Biden has, we are told, a sure touch on the world stage. But that hasn’t stopped the octogenarian US leader from stepping into a diplomatic cannibal kerfuffle in Papua New Guinea.
Biden has been thinking out loud that his aviator uncle Ambrose may have fallen prey to “cannibals” in the Pacific nation after he was shot down during the Second World War.
Employing the famous Biden technique of speaking first and thinking afterwards, the US President suggested American forces were unable to recover Ambrose Finnegan’s remains after his plane crashed near Papua New Guinea “because there used to be a lot of cannibals” in the region.
You’d think he might have had some evidence. But military records from 1994 make no mention of the plane being shot down, let alone of cannibals eating the evidence.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, James Marape, dismissed Biden’s comment, made last week at a trip to a war memorial, as “loose” talk; loose talk that could have diplomatic consequences.
The Papuan foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko thinks Biden’s “uninformed remarks” could hurt relations between the countries, which had deepened in recent years as Washington vies for primacy with Beijing in the strategically important Pacific region.
Like most remarks that really cause offence, Biden’s new gaffe contained the element of cultural truth needed to really rile those on the receiving end.
Papuans are a little sensitive to the “cannibal” label because until the 1960s the country’s Kore tribe practised ritual cannibalism – eating the brains of dead family members – and that custom helped to spread the prion disease Kuru.
But that doesn’t mean they ate uncle Ambrose. The leader of the free world should have put his, presumably Kuru-free, brain into gear before suggesting it.
Leaving aside the peeved Papuans, the dispute over Biden’s cannibal comment reminds us of his gaffes and garrulousness – and how in 2024 of all years, he needs to keep a lid on them.
Already this year he has twice stated, incorrectly, that he met the German leader Helmut Kohl at an event in 2021. Kohl left office in 1998 and died in 2017. Biden meant Angela Merkel.
Shortly before, he’d confused the current French President Emmanuel Macron with a predecessor, François Mitterrand, who died in 1996.
As far back as 2009, Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, appeared to acknowledge the problem at that year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner when host and comedian Wanda Sykes mocked Biden’s verbal diarrhoea: “God forbid that Joe Biden falls into the hands of terrorists. We’re done. Oh, they won’t even have to torture him. All they have to do is go: ‘How’s it going, Joe?”
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The dispute over Biden’s cannibal comment reminds us of his gaffes and garrulousness