"The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling! Maybe Not..."

Apparently Vice President Joe Biden isn't just satisfied with being merely a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, he now also wishes to assume the duties of the office of Surgeon General. Biden, his proclivity to "speak off message" still in tact, prescribed on NBC's "Today" show this past Friday his personal recommendations to the nation at large on how best to avoid the now infamous (and totally mischaracterized) swine flu, pointedly suggesting that flying commercial airlines or riding the subway isn't a good idea.

"I would tell the members of my family - and I have - I wouldn't go anywhere in confined spaces now," said Biden, a statement that went decidedly well beyond the precautions President Obama's own health officials have more prudently recommended. Continued the unbridled Biden, "If you're out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that's one thing. If you're in a closed container, a closed car, a closed classroom, it's a different thing." Ears perked up, eyebrows lifted and rectums tightened all through the White House that instantly went into damage control trying once again to mitigate Biden's latest gaffe, lamely rephrasing and restating what the V.P. meant to say.

Our nation, and the world at large for that matter, stood poised to go into full panic mode, as more and more media inflamed reports of a pending catastrophic health pandemic filled the majority of the 24 hour news cycle. Downplaying the available historic data that thousands of people die each year as a consequence of the more common strains of influenza, the media choose to overly-hype the newly germinated flu strain, treating it as though it is the reincarnation of the great plagues of yesteryear.

Such a deliberate characterization on the media's part, coupled with such irresponsible statements as Biden's only serves to further push an already nervous and irritated public toward the point of all out chaos where an unfounded rumor or an ill-advised statement pushes "Mr. & Mrs. Joe Citizen" to escalate their personal concerns into knee jerk reactions of self-preservation by instigating in mass the pulling of their children out of school, being absent from their places of employment, and initiating runs on the nation's financial institutions, grocery stores, and gas stations. If Biden's personal opinions were not akin to crying fire in a crowded theater, it served to fill the venue unnecessarily with whiffs of pungent smoke.

The only solace in Biden's latest unsupervised foray into the public spotlight is the fact that he has long established a record of putting his mouth in the wrong gear before consulting the owner's manual. The only confined space that we should be wary of and Joe should ardently avoid is located between his ears.