When politicians go out and press the flesh with the hoi polloi, they usually intend to get media coverage that paints them as a down-to-earth people, just like their constituents. Instead, Joe Biden wound up making himself look like a jerk when a local business manager teased him about high taxes, leading the Vice President to lecture Scott Borkin about being a “smartass all the time.” Unfortunately for Biden, this moment got captured on videotape:

Unsurprisingly, Fox News decided to follow up with Borkin this morning, who pronounced himself shocked by Biden’s reaction to his joke:

The manager of a Milwaukee custard shop who was scolded by Vice President Biden said he was shocked to hear the No. 2 guy in the country call him a “smartass.”

The exchange was caught by a local television station while Scott Borkin, manager of Kopp’s Frozen Custard, was showing the vice president around Friday. Borkin had made a crack about taxes when the vice president appeared to snap at him.

“I was just joking around,” Borkin told Fox News on Monday. “It was kind of shocking to hear that come out of his mouth.”

Besides having a consistent lack of humor about itself, this White House also seems to have an obsession with the word “ass,” doesn’t it? It also shows that they don’t particularly care to listen to dissenting opinions, even when they go out on the road to meet with everyday average Americans to shore up their sliding popularity. At least Barack Obama treated Joe the Plumber politely and attempted to engage him, rather than call him a name and tell him to shut up.

That, of course, recalls thelast time Sergeant Smartass had a voter-engagement exercise blow up in his face, when he ran for President in 1988’s Democratic primaries:

We won’t be fortunate enough to get Biden to drop out of the VP slot, but this proves that nothing much has changed in 22 years. Sergeant Smartass is still an arrogant jackass.