Joe The Plumber Is A Joke

[MoonKit]

Now he wants to be a musician.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/15072.html

Gimme a break. This election is absolutely out of control.

[Terastas]

So, anyone else still think he wasn't a plant?

Personally, all this is to me is one less reason to worry on the 4th. Every time I think McCain and his supporters have struck rock bottom, one of them finds a way to sink even lower.

[Scott Gardener]

He was right to bring up the challenge to Obama; we don't want just to elect whoever sounds prettiest without some serious scrutiny. But, the debate is done, and Joe's horse looks pretty dead from the beatings. He's milked the spotlight too much already. Sheez; come on! Get a license!

At least he'll be releasing his album on the night of Obama's inauguration.

[tyger]

*Gasp!* his name isn't even Joe?!?!!!

[MoonKit]

Is McCain even really trying at all? Between this and Palin.

[Kaebora]

Fox bought the rights to make a Joe The Plumber sitcom.

[Spongy]

Fox bought the rights to make a Joe The Plumber sitcom.

You can't be serious! My goodness, can networks not come up with their own ideas? Joe The Plumber...a sitcom!?

That's just wrong. To use something like that as an idea for a sitcom? Come on...

[W'rkncacnter]

My thoughts on the matter:

Samuel Wurzelbacher is a victim (or beneficiary, if you look at it that way) of circumstance. He asked Obama the original 'buy my business=more taxes' question in a fleeting encounter. He probably thought it was a good 'gotcha' to hit the senator with, given that he was in support of McCain and wanted to make Obama look bad; a situation in which he was a picture-perfect example of the typical individual who wouldn't benefit from Obama's tax plan.

The freakishness starts when the GOP decides to make him their poster boy. 'Joe' is right on one matter: if his business made more than $250,000 a year and it was all taxable in the same tax bracket, yes, it would cost him more money that John McCain's economic policy. The GOP takes note of this and McCain decides to use him as a model of how one would not benefit from Obama's tax policy; a textbook gotcha point in modern politics.

But here's the lone nail in the coffin, folks: 'Joe' was lying. His business, if he decided to buy it (which he did not and wasn't considering) wouldn't make $250,000 per year in taxable income; 'Joe' himself only makes $40k a year. That's all he's really guilty of (besides tax evasion, but that's a legal, not a political matter); everything else, from his ridiculous quotes and opinions to the sad fact that this is what the GOP considers a secret weapon, isn't his fault. He was in the wrong place and said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

To be perfectly honest, I pity the guy. He's a neoconservative, yes, a misinformed (in some cases) neoconservative, but that's his opinion; as Obama would put it, that's his choice. I really blame the media for blowing up this ridiculous circus of a story and putting a microphone in front of this man so he could make a fool of himself. In his position, I would gaffe as much as he did, if not more so; not every American is a completely informed individual who knows what's good for the country and has stable, sensible opinions on everything (some of us are downright stupid, if you look at certain issues), and if you put this much attention to a random person, they will make as much of a laughingstock of themselves as Joe Biden does about once a week.

[Terastas]

The media didn't put a microphone in this guy's face until McCain mentioned his name twenty times during the next debate.

Still, Joe certainly isn't shying away from the spotlight he claims he doesn't like. Between the campaign stops he's now speaking at the podium at and these new entertainment deals, Joe is shaping up to be a classic wannabe starlet.

I don't believe it was ever about politics or his nonexistent plumbing business (he doesn't have a license after all). It was him pretending to be a working class American on the behalf of the McCain campaign.

I'm sorry, but it boggles my mind that anyone can still support McCain after all the underhanded dirty politics he's done (seriously, doesn't it bother you that he's banking his entire political future on Americans being stupid and gullible?). Joe the plumber was just one of many attempts by the McCain campaign to discredit Obama and prop themselves up on a big load of nothing.

As for a Joe the plumber sitcom. . . Well hell, why not? If the Geico cavemen are sitcom-worthy, Joe the plumber can be too. I think he already looks a lot like the dad from Married With Children -- maybe they can do a remake.

[W'rkncacnter]

The media didn't put a microphone in this guy's face until McCain mentioned his name twenty times during the next debate.

And was that his fault? Specific people have been called up as poster boys for political stereotypes before, but most of the time the group pushing the idea decides to leave it before the enormous weight of gray, muddy truth crushes their flimsy black-and-white purist concept like a house of cards. Most John Q. Public characters and stereotypes were based on real people, but one should take note of the words 'based on' (for example, Rosie the Riveter was based on a real person, a woman named Geraldine Doyle, but she didn't know it until almost 40 years after her image had been used).

Allow me to correct myself: there are three mistakes here. The first was 'Joe' lying about his business,which started this whole mess. The second was the McCain campaign persisting in using his story even though a rudimentary fact-check rendered the whole idea ridiculous.

The third, and here's the important one, was 'Joe' actually going along with it. Why is something only he knows: loyalty to McCain, overconfidence, thinking this is opportunity knocking, or simply spotlight trauma; any of these could be the right answer. Suffice to say that this is the kind of thing that happens when you put an average individual, with no reason for fame other than circumstance and 'friends' in high places, in the spotlight: he makes a fool of himself.

I hate wannabe starlets with a passion because they are so full of themselves, but I also pity them because I know how it's going to end; they get a few fleeting minutes of fame and fortune, and then they burn out and fizzle like a bad firework. Most people aren't made for the spotlight, and being a figure in the media is a hazardous and complicated lifestyle. There are many who simply don't make the cut. I am of the opinion that 'Joe' is one of these.

[Alpha]

This is just this knucklehead's 15 minutes of fame. Once the election is over, his a$$ is gonna fade into obscurity. Thank God!

[Midnight]

.

[Uniform Two Six]

I'm sorry, but I'm so sick of all of the conservative bull***t. I have to deal with it whenever I talk to that part of my family which thinks Regan was the second coming of Christ or something. I've got a relative that is exactly like this Wurtzlebacher (sp?) dude, and it's infuriating. I'm sorry, but if you're stupid enough to complain about taxes on national television, while at the same time owing back taxes to the friggin IRS, and somehow don't expect anybody to call you on your ***t, then you deserve to get dragged through the mud. Damn, but I hate people like that.