Santa Ana Police Department honorees will be praised in Washington, D.C., by a Biden.
But it won't be Joe Biden.
It'll be the vice president's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, who will do the honors, the Department of Defense has announced.
Mrs. Biden will be the keynote speaker at the annual Secretary
of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award Ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on
Sept. 17.
Among the 15 employers from across the
nation receiving the 2009 Secretary of Defense Employer Support
Freedom Award, the U.S. Government's highest honor given to employers
for their outstanding support of their employees who serve in the
National Guard and Reserve, is the Santa Ana Police Department.
“Members
of our National Guard and Reserves and their families depend on their
employers for support,” Dr. Biden says in a statement announcing her upcoming speaking gig. “I'm pleased to celebrate those
employers who have done an outstanding job of supporting our troops as
they answer the call of duty and service to our nation.”
If it's any consolation to the Santa Ana men and women in blue who hoped it would be Joe and not Jill Biden honoring them, at least the likelihood of a verbal gaffe just dropped 200 percent.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.