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November 3, 2008

‘08 Parting Shots: A Regular Jo(k)e

sJTP.jpg

I was interested to see Josh Marshall call Joe the Plummer a skinhead. Sadly, most of the media missed or ignored the fact he was spewing racist garbage and looking to entrap Obama from the get-go.

Looking back at the key players and portraits of ‘08, I’m impressed how photographer Christopher Morris draws such a bead on Wurzelbacher. What does it mean that this guy came out of nowhere and hit the national circuit without a drop of nervousness or inhibition? What does it mean that he actually stood up McCain at a rally in the closing days of the campaign? What does it mean that this guy would do a FOX interview in a worn t-shirt?

Although the following associations wouldn’t apply universally, from what we know of the supposed “everyman,” the bald head and the crossed arms and the set jaw and the t-shirt wardrobe all smack of a righteous superiority that is off-the-charts.

And McCain set up this skinhead as Peoria?

(image: Christopher Morris/TIME. from: McCain’s Final Push. Sanduski, OH)

  • http://biobrain.blogspot.com Doctor Biobrain

    “Righteous superiority”?? This is Joe the Plumber we’re talking about here, so quit your elitist claptrap and bow down to the man who got Obama tap dancing on his doorstep like a black Fred Astaire. And sure, it’s easy for you to act all high & mighty, but poor Joe was about to buy a million-dollar business and begin his ascent out of the pipes and into the American Dream…before it was dashed forever by The One’s socialistic rise up Bill Ayers’ pantskirt in his fevered quest to destroy America and everything holy.
    And sure, some people may say that Mr. the Plumber actually benefits from Obama’s Marxist tax fantasies, but only if he stays poor and downtrodden. And now that Obama has forever put ownership of a multi-million dollar plumbing business out of Joe’s reach, the paltry welfare he’ll receive in return will be but cold ashes to Joe’s insatiable skinhead desires. Joe could have been a great businessman, perhaps with a few underpaid Joes of his own on the payroll, but now all he can be is a spokesman for the very people you mock with your very existence. So bravo, Mr. Bagnews. Bravo. You may have taken Joe down a peg, but with him, you have taken down every man that Joe represents: The American Workingman. I hope you’re proud of yourself. I hope you’re really proud.
    You know something, reading over everything I just wrote really makes me think I spend too much time reading conservative blogs. After this election is over, I think I’ll try to get out more often. Maybe take the kids to the park. Perhaps read a book or two. Blogging is making me old.

  • The BAG

    I vote for the park, the books and the blogging.

  • http://revolutionredux.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/daily-constitutional-thou-shall-not/ Annie

    He represents the “real America” of Palin – willfully ignorant, religion as weapon, certainty in the face of ignorance and stupidity, and in your face blinkered nationalism disguised as patriotism. He’s the poster boy for small town Ohio.
    I should know – I escaped from it after years of domestic terrorism wrought by people who looked, talked and acted just like Joe.
    Banality of evil is another way to caption Joe, too.

  • rob miller

    has anyone noted that he’s wearing a “brownshirt”, uniform de rigueur of the sturm abteilung? the association and usefulness of röhm to hitler was much the same as joe to mccain. hitler was finished with röhm when röhm got too big for his brown britches, so he hung him from a meathook. win or lose, the person of joe will be discarded as well, since his usefulness to mccain will have vanished. but its important to remember that the “brownshirts” will still be there.

  • artguk

    ah,tain’itso,joe(?)

  • zatopa

    I kind of think the McCain campaign set up this guy as the kind we are supposed to be afraid of if Obama becomes President.

  • KansasKowboy

    This guy reminds me of Jeff Gannon. Another bald headed “?conservative?” (I don’t know what else to call him) that works out. Another guy on the political scene that isn’t who he says he is. This guy is a fern. By that I mean he is a GOP plant. It just goes to show you how far off the GOP is from the American sole to think that this guy is our “everyman.”. I think his best future will be in establishing his own website much in the fashion of Jeff Gannon’s, or whatever his name is.

  • Amy

    Every person who orbited around McCain’s campaign has been slimy and/or mentally ill.
    Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, Joe Lieberman, the girl who carved her own face up, the Grosse Pointe Michigan woman who wouldn’t give Halloween candy to kids of Obama supporters, and the usual assortment of noxious Republican operatives, Kristol, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al.
    Even McCain’s wife crossed the border of taste and decorum when she, as a potential first lady, stood up and attacked Obama while introducing her husband before a rally.
    McCain needs to be defeated if only to make these awful people slither back to the privacy of their own lives. I’m guessing Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin will fight the hardest against their slide back into obscurity.

  • Berry

    I always thought old Joe was a plant. Say it aint so Joe My ___. McCain fell into to that Faustian dream and sold his soul shortly after he lost to Bush in 2000. Any other man (or woman) would have stood up for his wife and family, and his/her self after Rove’s cutthroat thrashing of his family in North Carolina not McCain. McCain who I thought seriously of voting for in 2000, instead of falling away from Bush fell into his arms and begged to be loved. Now in 2008 he’s been promised the Presidency and nothing will kep him from what’s his.
    Joe the Plumber was just one more trick, a fairly benign one next to some of his others until “spread the wealth” became code for “take from the whites and give to those no good blacks”. I was so naive it took a faithful Rush listener to explain to me exactly what it meant, even then it took a video of a middle aged security guard volunteering at McCain’s campaign on a CNN video (I think CNN) saying she was barely getting by on what she earned and could not afford to send any of her paycheck to “those people”, and chose to work for McCain so she could “protect” herself.

  • http://www.doves2day.blogspot.com g

    I think there’s enough to doubt Joe’s veracity without assuming he’s a skin-head.
    At worst, he’s a committed McCain supporter, who was injected into the national dialogue as a plant, with coaching and calculation.
    At best, he’s an opportunist who stumbled into something, believed the McCain campaign’s flattery, perceived it’s exploitation of him as some kind of affirmation of his worth and political relevance, and tried to gain every bit of attention, perks, and expanded opportunity of it he could.
    I don’t fault the McCain campaign for their cynicism, but I do fault the media for allowing this idiot air-time to hold forth with his blatantly partisan, uninformed, self-important bullshit without challenging him.
    Joe’s 15 minutes of fame are up. His book deal and record deal are jokes. The McCain’s will drop him like a hot potato. He’ll go back to threading pipes in Toledo and his buddies will laugh at him behind his back.

  • travlingjb

    WHY ISN’T “JOE THE PLUMBER” “JOE THE SOLDIER” IF HE BELIEVES IN THE RIGHT WINGS MANTRA?

  • Puka

    The puffed chest, the crossed arms, the jutting jaw, the balk head, the severe face = Mussolini.

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