iowahawk: I AM JOE

iowahawk: I AM JOE:

The Hawk wrote a serious piece, and quite an eloquent one:

"We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the job's description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Are you a Joe? Say it proud. Leave it on every goddamn newspaper comment section and online forum. Let these pressroom and online thugs know you won't stay silent when they try to destroy the life of a private citizen for speaking his mind -- because for every one of them, there are a million Joe Wurzelbachers. And for that we should all be thankful."

Scoop's thoughts: I hear what he's saying, but I think the Hawk is ignoring reality. It is obvious why Obama's minions have turned on ol' Joe: distraction. It's just politics as usual. The Plumber managed to break Obama away from his usual carefully orchestrated media bites. Obviously, running for President requires a tremendous amount of hypocrisy, no more or less for the Democrats than the Republicans. They're all the same. They run on a sanitized media-friendly version of themselves. In the case of McCain, he has two big challenges (1) he can't show the world that he's kind of bloodthirsty (2) he can't show the conservatives that he's not really one of them. That makes his life difficult, because he has to hide both liberal domestic leanings and ultra-hawkish international leanings. Obama's job is much easier. He only has to hide the fact that he's really a socialist. He has managed to do that pretty well in dealing with reporters and his opposition, but Joe the Plumber managed to catch him off his guard. Since being linked to the S-word represents Obama's only true vulnerability, his Achilles heel, so to speak, and he can't deny what he said on tape, his flacks and lackeys have no choice but to try to turn the focus away from that self-confessed socialism and onto poor ol' Joe the Bartender, who can't even call in Crazy Guggenheim for a song. It's the equivalent of "stage magician's distraction," all designed to get your mind focused elsewhere. Does Joe really mind this? I doubt it. He's famous, and may make a few bucks along the way. I'd love to be in his shoes. The liberals are acting inappropriately, of course, but the conservatives are still crying crocodile tears for Joe.

By the way, didn't Joe play the girlfriend's father in Mallrats?