Joe the Plumber

Are you as disturbed as I am about the relentless attacks on Joe the Plumber by supporters of Barak Obama and his cheerleaders in the news media? 

Joe the Plumber is a regular guy named Joe Wurzelbacher from Toledo, Ohio.   Joe recently met Obama during an Obama campaign trip to Toledo and asked him an innocent and perfectly legitimate question about his tax proposals.   Obama responded to Joe by committing one of the few mistakes during his carefully orchestrated campaign.   Obama defended his tax proposals by saying they would “spread the wealth around.”     By his answer, Obama revealed himself to be the socialist that he is—someone who wants to redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not.   You may or may not agree with Obama’s philosophy, but at least it is now out in the open. 

In order to deflect attention from Obama’s gaffe, his supporters and the news media have gone on the attack.   They have attacked poor Joe for being an unlicensed plumber, even though Joe believes he is not required to have a license because his employer is licensed.   They have attacked Joe for having an unpaid tax lien, even though the same people didn’t have a problem when Congressman Charles Rangel, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was recently revealed to owe a substantial amount in back taxes.    Joe is being attacked as a fool for failing to be smart enough to support Obama’s tax plan, which would benefit him now but penalize him if he is later successful.  There are even reports that members of the news media are reviewing the court records relating to Joe’s divorce in an effort to find some more dirt on Joe.    

Obama himself went on the attack by suggesting that a mere plumber like Joe could not make enough money to be penalized under Obama’s tax plan.   It apparently never occurred to Obama that a mere plumber might oppose his plan on the basis of principle or on the basis of the hope or expectation that he would someday achieve financial success. 

In addition to the attacks on Joe, the McCain campaign has been criticized for failing to investigate Joe.   Spokesmen for the McCain campaign say they never heard of Joe before he asked his question.    All McCain did was highlight Obama’s answer, which in Obama’s mind was McCain’s cardinal sin.    In other words, McCain is guilty for failing to investigate the person who asked the question that Obama answered and by doing so revealed his underlying philosophy, which he has done his best to conceal. 

I don’t know about you, but I feel sorry for Joe.   The poor guy asked a simple but legitimate question, and all of a sudden he has news media satellite trucks parked outside his house.   I was journalism major in college, and I am a former journalist and a former liberal.   In my lifetime, I have never seen anything like the bias currently being demonstrated by the news media.   I hope and pray that my bias was never so obvious when I was a journalist.   My bias may be obvious now, but I am not currently holding myself out as a journalist, and I disclosed my bias during my second post on this blog. 

If McCain wins the Presidency, which is still highly unlikely, all the credit should go to Joe for his question and to Obama’s supporters and the news media for the way they have treated Joe in order to deflect attention from Obama’s answer to Joe’s question.  I believe the average American will be as offended as I am by the attacks on Joe.   If Obama is as smart as I think he is, he will call his supporters and his friends in the news media and tell them to call off the dogs before his chances of being President of the United States go down the tube.