Frank is wondering why Josephine the Plumber wasn’t mentioned during the debate. Do the candidates have something against Jane Withers?
–Frank Coniff’s Facebook page
What have we come to as a nation, when a registered Republican can’t pretend to be an independent in order to ask a loaded question in bad faith? Well, in today’s exercise in pre-fab dudgeon, Jonah demands that you answer him! (But you first have to promise that you’re not going to follow up, or pry into any personal stuff and make him all uncomfortable…)
At a John McCain rally in Virginia on Saturday, Tito Munoz had come to face the enemy: the news media, which had declared war on Joe Wurzelbacher.
“Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber?” he yelled at a group of reporters, including my National Review colleague, Byron York. “Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong?
It’s not wrong at all, Jermaine. In fact, such quintessentially American industries as tabletop gaming and sex reassignment surgery are built upon that very urge.
Who knows what it will do for McCain in the end, but the Joe the Plumber phenomenon is real
If by “real” you mean a not terribly truthful guy standing in his front yard for half a cable news cycle, alternately holding court like an half-witted Alf Landon or glowering into the cameras like that guy from The Shield, and if by “phenomenon” you mean a catchphrase with a life expectancy somewhere between the Macarena and a K-meson.
At the rally, supporters carried handmade signs reading “Phil the Brick Layer” and banners proclaiming “Rose the Teacher.”
Other signs seen at McCain-Palin rallies included, “Jim the Lobbyist,” “Try Metamucil,” and “Show Us Your Mount McKinleys!” Anyway, it seems clear from all the self-labeled archetypes that the Republican ticket has won the votes of America’s local kids TV show hosts. We tried to get a statement from Soupy Sales and Hobo Kelly, but Officer Joe Bolton and Sheriff John stepped in and clubbed us senseless with their nightsticks.
Barack Obama, in contrast, has offered the most rhetorically eloquent defense of collectivism since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Somebody who loves Jonah should pull him aside and mention that not everybody has read that book by Amity Shlaes blaming FDR for the Great Depression, and there’s still a few people around who actually remember that era (one of them’s running for President) and most Americans don’t regard Social Security as the speartip of Bolshevik revolution, and in general, those of us who live outside the sealed, Biosphere II-like environment of The Corner haven’t yet been fully conditioned to think of FDR as a man who could have been Trotsky if he’d just been a better dancer.
Obama also often articulates a vision of government inspired by the biblical injunction to be our brother’s keeper. Few would dispute the moral message, but many disagree that such religious imperatives are best translated into tax or economic policy. (Where are the separation of church and state fetishists when you need them?)
They’re over there, Jonah, taking personal inventory and wondering if they should really be devoting their pervy leisure hours to fetishizing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment when they could just as easily be donning two wetsuits and a butt-plug and practicing hilariously incompetent auto-erotic asphyxia.
We’ve heard the candidate himself say that we should agree to higher taxes in the name of “neighborliness,” and that he’d raise the capital gains tax — even if it demonstrably lowered revenues — “for the purposes of fairness.” His “tax cut” for 95% of Americans is in large part a middle-class dole. He will cut checks to millions who pay no income tax at all and call it a tax cut.
Because people who don’t pay federal income taxes don’t pay taxes, because there’s only that one kind. The Lucky Duckies, they’re just like 2/3rds of major American corporations.
Millions of Americans don’t share this vision. They don’t see the economy as a pie, whereby your slice can only get bigger if someone else’s gets smaller. They don’t begrudge the wealthy their wealth; they only ask to be given the same opportunities.
Sally the waitress at my local I-Hop will often stop by my table to refill my coffee cup and murmur dreamily, “All I want out of life is a fair shake and a no-bid contract to provide non-potable, e-coli-infected drinking water to our permanent military facilities in Iraq.”
They look at countries such as France and, rather than envy their socialized medicine and short workweeks, they fear their joblessness and tax policies that punish entrepreneurialism. People like Tito Munoz look at America and see an open path to their own American dream.
I tell ya, dude, there’s nothing scarier than comprehensive health care. That’s why this Halloween, I’m going as hypertension medication with a low co-pay. BRRRRRRR!
It would be nice if the media at least tried to understand this point.
Instead, they attacked and belittled a citizen who asked a candidate a question. They think he’s stupid or a liar for not understanding that a promised check from a President Obama is more valuable than some pipe dream about future success.
Exactly. They all obsess about the taxes Joe won’t actually have to pay, the business he doesn’t actually plan to buy, and the plumbing he’s not actually licensed to do. But does anyone mention how much he looks like Lex Luthor’s stupider brother, Lax Luthor? No!
Pah! Latoya was right.