John McCain recently called Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher an "American Hero", and "my role model".
Joe the Plumber as an abstract has become a centerpiece of the McCain campaign, standing in for the white, middle class exemplar of Nixon's "silent majority" who sees the times a-changin' and doesn't like it one bit.
Joe the Plumber as a human being makes nowhere near a quarter million dollars a year, and has trouble paying his taxes as it is. This emblem of the middle class is also considering a country music recording contract, has hired a publicist, and said he would be up for a run for congress.
He's also become a visible mouthpiece for the McCain campaign. Not content with calling Obama a socialist, saying he "tap dances like Sammy Davis, Jr.", and agreeing that an Obama presidency means death to Israel, McCain's role model had this to say today:
It could have originally been said that Joe the Plumber was not a legitimate target for investigation and criticism. No longer.
This election is a referendum on Barack Obama. McCain and Palin's strategy has been to link Obama to radical characters and to repeatedly pose the question "Who is the real Barack Obama?" The answer, of course, is that he is a smooth-talking celebrity who is conspiring to take your money and give it to poor people while he surrenders to terrorists and his friends conspire to bomb the pentagon.
Obama is going to be president-elect in two days. McCain cannot have his surrogates questioning his loyalty to his country and to the democratic process. The country is so divided on cultural lines that nearly half of the American public will believe that there is a traitor in the white house. If McCain really wants to put country first, he should drop this idiot and let him fall onto the pop-culture scrap heap next to "where's the beef".
About Me
- Joel Cherry
- is in his final year of studies at the University of Regina's School of Journalism. Joel is a meta-information pundit.
1 comment:
What makes me confused about Joe the plumber's role in the McCain campaign is that he claimed to be middle-class with a $250,000 annual income. It's bizarre that he would champion a lesser tax for those with that income when he, in fact, doesn't make that kind of money. But, what is even more bizarre is that a person who pulls in $250,000 a year can be considered middle-class. Maybe it's the student/journalist in me, but if I made a quarter million per year, I'd call myself upper-class.
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