Comments on: Joe the Plumber: Metapundit

By: Matt Schiavenza

Matt Schiavenza — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:48:02 +0000

Actually, wasn’t Joe’s fame due simply to luck? Nothing he said was particularly noteworthy, but he happened to be present when Obama uttered a gaffe that the flailing McCain campaign pounced on. Had Obama phrased “spread the wealth” a little more carefully, I doubt anyone would have ever heard about Joe the Plumber.

By: Suddenly CPAC « Around Teh Table

Suddenly CPAC « Around Teh Table — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:33:41 +0000

[...] Article: A brief reflection from Julian Sanchez about the absurdity of Joe the Plumber’s continued [...]

By: JJ

JJ — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:12:59 +0000

Joe is the reductio ad absurdum of the conservative new New Class. Country and Western Marxism out of control. Even David Frum knows this, and has for a while.

By: Joe The Plumber and Cindy Sheehan

Joe The Plumber and Cindy Sheehan — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:39:31 +0000

[...] Julian Sanchez and Jesse Walker draw a great connection that would never have occurred to me: Joe Wurzelbacker as the Republican Cindy Sheehan. They’re at odds as to the relation. [...]

By: Kevin B. O'Reilly

Kevin B. O'Reilly — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:15:15 +0000

The problem, Jesse, is that Wurzelbacher didn’t even represent the right mascot at the start. He *said* he might be hurt by Obama’s planned tax increases on small businesses, but the reality was he was nowhere close to earning $250,000 himself and never gave any realistic sign he planned to buy out his employer or that his employer even brings in $250,000 in *profit* annually that would be hit by the higher marginal rate. It’s not just that he’s subsequently been pawned off as a subpar metapundit; his original burst of fame was due to his either misunderstanding or misrepresenting how Obama’s tax plan would affect his average Joeness. None of the above, of course, should be taken as defense of Obama’s planned tax increases, budget plan, the stimulus package, etc.

By: Julian

Julian — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:02:18 +0000

grr. “That there’s” and “The important thing” My apologies for such faulty proof-reading.

By: Julian

Julian — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:01:05 +0000

I disagree that here’s anything fundamentally new about his experience with the limelight. Sometimes in the middle of a football game you hand the mascot a megaphone; does anyone really care what he says, or how he says it? The important hing is that there is a person, a symbol, that represents the identity of the team and its supporters out there yelling, cartwheeling, bravely acting the fool to show you aren’t out just yet. That’s what Joe the Plumber is; a Mascot showing that the Republican party still “gets” the common man.

Of course, having a mascot doesn’t make the message true…

By: Jesse Walker

Jesse Walker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:40:41 +0000

I'm not so sure that he's that different from Sheehan, who after a while was offering pronouncements on all sorts of topics unrelated to Iraq. (Venezuela, for example.) Indeed, for a couple months now I've been thinking of JtP as the Cindy Sheehan of the right: Both evolved from sympathetic spontaneous grassroots voices into increasingly grotesque media figures, sinking deeper into self-parody the more they lost their original reason for speaking out and embraced their celebrity role. In a perverse way, it reminds me of the end of Waiting for Guffman.

By: links for 2009-03-02 « Ned Resnikoff

links for 2009-03-02 « Ned Resnikoff — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:03:09 +0000

[...] Joe the Plumber: Metapundit [...]

By: Erstwhile

Erstwhile — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:01:06 +0000

The whole JtP thing turned to pure farce when they sent the dude to Gaza. I mean, WTF?

The original premise–a real life “forgotten man” who just wanted to keep a little more of his paycheck and maybe get the chance to start his own business–was not a bad one.

And let’s not forget the vicious and illegal assault that the media and government, respectively, immediately launched against him. Although he is now remembered for touting entrepreneurialism and buffoonery, JtP’s real symbolism may be as a posterboy for the need to be secure in one’s personal data.