Biden thinks The Onion’s spoofs of him are ‘hilarious’

A mock photo of Vice President Joe Biden washing a Trans-Am shirtless. Strange? Distasteful? Crossing the line?

Not so, Biden says.

"I think it's hilarious," Biden told Yahoo! in a wide-ranging interview Thursday.

Satirical publication The Onion has repeatedly made the Vice President a target for particularly randy news stories and online cartoon spoofs -- and the jokes have been a viral sensation.

In The Onion's stories Biden invites the "nation's women" to talk taxes at a "private ski chalet", bounces a check at a liquor store, gets banned from Dave & Buster's, and most famously...

[Video: Watch one of The Onion's Joe Biden parodies]

"I saw the one of me washing a Trans-Am automobile in the driveway shirtless with tattoos all over myself and out there," Biden said with a smile. He took some issue with the story, though. "By the way, I have a Corvette-- a '67 Corvette-- not a Trans-Am."

Biden laughed that he's probably not supposed to encourage the mocking, but he said he still gets a kick out of it.

"Most people refer to me who know me, and even in the press, of being a little bit square," Biden said. "And now, I'm the philanderer. I think it's hilarious, the stuff they do on me."

Biden's staff had previously refused to comment on the The Onion coverage. "Let me get this straight: You want to interview the vice president about stories about him in The Onion?" spokesman Jay Carney asked The New York Times when they tried to get the scoop. "Well, I'll give you credit for trying," Carney said.

The Times was attempting to verify reports from The Onion staff that Biden's team had emailed the publication to tell them "keep it up."

It appears The Onion may not have been joking about that one.

Anna Robertson and Erin Green produced the interview for Yahoo! News.

(Photo of Biden and Obama: AP/Ron Edmonds)