Good ol' Joe Biden grabbed the spotlight away from Barack Obama today, when he appeared with the president after the signing of the healthcare bill into law.
As the vice president congratulated his boss on the passage of the bill, he was caught on the live TV saying "This is a big f*cking deal!"
Here's the video:
While there's been no official comment, press secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted soon after: "And yes Mr. Vice President, you're right."
No, this isn't likely the first time the word has been uttered in the White House.
Both the previous veep and his boss have had their colorful language capture headlines.
There weren't any microphones around when Vice President Dick Cheney dropped an F-bomb to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the Senate back in 2004.
George W. Bush wasn't yet in office in September 2000 when an open microphone caught his description of reporter Adam Clymer, as a "major league a**hole from The New York Times."
Cheney's response: "Oh yeah, he is, big time."
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
