From The New York Times:

"Mr. Sharpton said that when Mr. Biden called him to apologize, Mr. Sharpton started off the conversation reassuring Mr. Biden about his hygienic practices. "I told him I take a bath every day," Mr. Sharpton said."

Well, that covers clean, now what about the rest of the quote:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man."

In all fairness to the Rev, he's certainly very articulate and bright. So, since he does take a bath every day, I think he was probably dinging Al on the, "nice-looking guy" front, which I took as some form of ATM test. You know, would you scare Joe Biden if you were coming up behind him at an ATM while he was getting money?

But, the real story here is that Joe Biden is actually calling people whom he presumably considers to be "mainstream African-American(s)" and personally apologizing. That's a lot of minutes on the cell phone there, depending on how thorough a job you do.

Think about it: Is he calling all the black members of Congress? How about black governors and prominent, black politicians like Harold Ford, Michael Steele, and Deval Patrick? We could go on and on with this and, of course, there are the mainstream black leaders Joe can't call, like MLK.

Some reporter should ask Joe how MLK failed the Obama test. Did Joe think he couldn't talk, was dumb, or was dirty, ugly, and scary? Come on, inquiring minds want to know.