Joe the Symbol of Know Nothingness

It’s been a while since I posted anything. This has no doubt been a huge disappointment to my legion of reader. I’ve been a little busy lately, and also just dumbstruck by how dumb things have gotten lately in this race.

The emergence of Joe the Plumber put me into the intellectual equivalent of a food coma. It was bad enough that McCain kept referencing him throughout the final debate, but then Joe turned up on TV the next day. And then he just would not fucking go away.

I know the culture war territory of “the liberal media elite” is well-worn, but the depressing thing for me about this election is how awful the media are at doing their jobs. They have totally capitulated to the idea of even-handedness rather than doing the work required to get to the truth. As I have said before, I’m biased - we all are. My bias is towards Obama. But all I want is for journalists to report facts, instead of hearsay.

We all learn from courtroom dramas on TV that hearsay is inadmissible. This is not quite true. Hearsay evidence is admissible only as evidence that the person heard someone say something. In other words, a witness may testify that somebody told them “I killed Bob.” This evidence has merit only as proof that the person said “I killed Bob” not that he actually killed Bob.

Journalism, however, has completely lost sight of this distinction. When John McCain says Barack Obama is planning to raise your taxes and Barack Obama says he isn’t, the media reports the hearsay in an attempt at even-handedness; “Rivals clash over tax policy” would be the typical headline. But facts really should matter. Without them, talking points are just endlessly repeated.

And so a creature like “Joe the plumber” is born. Sure, his name isn’t Joe. Sure he isn’t a plumber. Sure he doesn’t have a chance in hell of buying his boss’ business. Sure the business actually doesn’t earn “250-280 thousand dollars a year” as he claimed in his question to Obama. And sure he actualy earns something more like forty thousand dollars a year and so would get a tax cut under Obama’s plan. Despite all of this, he is allowed to roam around the country, being introduced as Joe the Plumber, and ranting about how Obama’s tax plan is going to kill small businesses. The media, however, doesn’t ask the question “Why is John McCain dragging this willfully uninformed bullet head around the country spreading lies?” Instead they ask, “Has McCain finally found a message that will resonate with working class Americans?” Fuck. Me.

Joe’s had some issues recently. Particularly fun was the time when he stood up John the Senator. The best part of this was that he blamed the campaign staff for not confirming the event with him, and said he was displeased at being called out when he wasn’t there. Even Joe the plumber is throwing McCain under the bus! Maybe Kristol can take him on at the Weekly Standard? Or maybe we’ll see Palin-Wurzelbacher in 2012?

Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Fuckwit are two peas in a pod. A pod full of stupid. They both share an incredible faith in their own homespun wisdom. Nevermind their complete lack of understanding of any of the major issues facing the country, by gum they have a point of view and it’s their God-given right as Americans to express it. It’s galling enough to be lectured by these know-nothing mouth-breathers about economic policy, but when they trot out the neo-con talking points on Israel enough is enough.

And apparently enough is even enough for Fox news. They may have been willing to return Sarah Palin’s nods and winks with nods and winks of their own at her inch deep understanding of everything, but John McCain and Joe the Plumber aren’t getting off so easy. Neil Cavuto ripped into John McCain’s lack of any coherent economic policy on his show on Fox Business Channel (sadly, it was seen only by 8 people, all members of the Cavuto family).

The bigger shocker was when Shep Smith decided, finally, that facts do matter, particularly when you’re using fear-mongering over Israel to push a fascist agenda against Obama. Just watch as Smith realizes in the middle of a phone interview with Joe the Plumber that he is dealing with a dangerous, uninformed, nut case. Please watch the clip. The end, when Smith shakes his head in genuine dismay at what he’s just heard, is mind-blowing.

So, we have entered the “end of days” of the campaign and the “mainstream media” are allowing McCain campaign talking points to go unchallenged for fear of seeming biased and the right wing media are having pangs of conscience. The twists in this campaign truly never end. But the campaign itself does. With any luck, on Tuesday night Obama will win and that will mark the end of Sarah and Joe’s fifteen minutes.

For all the talk that Palin is the face and future of the Republican party, I doubt it. Very few defeated Vice Presidential candidates go on to much of a future and I can’t think of one since 1900 that ascended to the Presidency after losing as VP nominee. She may well go back to Alaska and serve as governor for many years, but it will probably feel like small beans to be back in Alaska after a couple of months on the national scene. Her real future probably lies on TV as a homespun Ann Coulter. God help us.

Joe, meanwhile, reportedly has a PR agent and is looking for a record deal. Writing a book is apparently beyond his ambitions but he plans to belt out a couple of tunes on his gee-tar. I can’t wait to hear him wail mournfully about the death of Israel to the tune of Achey-Breaky Heart.