DAVID HARSANYI: Biden Gets Another Free Pass.

Remember when the media freaked out for three days over Sarah Palin’s completely innocuous use of the term “blood libel”?

Nearly every major media outlet took a deep dive on this critical outrage. Millions of Americans learned more about how Jews in the Middle Ages were sometimes falsely accused of kidnapping and murdering Christian children so they could use the blood for ritualistic baking. But more significantly: What did Palin mean? Was she sending a veiled message to evangelical voters? Was it just anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head again?

There will be no such national conversation over Vice President Joe Biden’s recent comments. While extolling the virtues of his son Beau at a speech at Legal Services Corp., our Clouseau-esque vice president launched into one of his folksy populist rants. “When he was over there in Iraq for a year,” he explained, “people 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 these women and men while overseas.” . . .

Is there any question that the repercussions for these sorts of mistakes are meted out asymmetrically? There is simply no way a Republican could get away with the buffoonery Biden peddles almost daily. Is the lack of genuine scrutiny over Biden’s mistakes a reflection of the media’s handling him like an unserious person? If that’s the case, then shouldn’t the president be open to far more criticism for putting the country in such a precarious position? Or is it that Biden finds himself in the right party? Either way, it reflects poorly on the media.

Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.