Comedian Jon Stewart skewered Vice President Joe Biden for using the word “shylock” in a recent speech.
“It is important to remember that as Joe Biden giveth, Joe Biden taketh away,” Stewart began during a segment on Thursday night’s episode of “The Daily Show.” A clip then played of Biden at the Legal Services Corporation’s 40th anniversary conference describing how his son would describe to him the the financial struggles of American soldiers.
“”[P]eople would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being…I mean these Shylocks who took advantage of, um, these women and men while overseas,” Biden said.
“For those of you who may not know it,” Stewart said. “The Shylocks are not an old school R&B group from the seventies. But in fact are a reference to the steady, greedy Jewish money lender in Merchant of Venice. Oh, which reminds me, f*ck you Shakespeare! F*ck you!”
But that was “a single isolated instance of using outdated racial terminology hardly disqualifies him from —” Stewart continued before cutting himself off and rolling another clip of Biden describing a meeting with a man Biden said is considered “the wisest man in the Orient.”
“Orient? Shylock?” Stewart said. “It’s like Biden hasn’t been out of the house since 1962!”
Watch the clip below:
