Closing The Book On Joe The Plumber

Having read so much nonsense about Joe Wurzelbacher on blogs and message boards, it has become very apparent that a substantial percentage of people hear a tidbit of "information" from whatever source they derive their information from, and then go boldly forth and spew their own interpretations of it. They give little thought to the veracity of what they relay, and it then becomes a string of gossip that decays along the way. Think of it as the old telephone game where one whispers in an other's ear who then whispers in the next ones ear and so on. Then when the last person relates what he has been told, it bears little resemblance to what the first person whispered.

One of the things I've read is that Joe The Plumber is a fraud and not a plumber at all. This is based on the fact that came out - after extensive investigations of him by the media - stating that Joe doesn't have a license. It doesn't matter that it was also discovered that in the state of Ohio one doesn't need a personal license if he works for a licensed contractor, which Joe does. Someone heard someone else say it and that's all that mattered.

Another absurdity seen on prominent display on the internet is the myth that "Joe was a McCain campaign plant". Considering the fact that Joe was in his yard when the Obama entourage came down the street, it would be a stretch of the imagination to believe that Joe was a plant. It would require the belief, also, that the McCain campaign either guided Obama and company down Joe's block and knew that Joe would be outside when they came by, or better yet, that the McCain campaign knew the route in advance and set Joe up in that house. For those of you are nodding as you read this, contact me immediately; I live in New York and I have several bridges for sale.

Perhaps my favorite one of all, though, is that Joe isn't even his real name. His real name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. Ha! For anyone who has ever lived in "flyover" country, it is common for people to use their middle names as their first.

As for the exchange between Obama and Joe, this is where it gets interesting. I guess it would have been much more palatable to the left if Joe had begun his question with, "Let's say I was buying a business..." or, "I have a friend who...". At least then we could remove the dispute over whether or not Joe was being honest and concentrate wholly on Obama's own honesty in saying he believes that spreading the wealth around is a good idea. It is compatible with Biden's notion that it's also good to "take money and put it in the pockets of middle class Americans". The fact remains that both of them will have to take from someone and give to another.

As we move further away, Joe is getting harder to hear anyway and he's beginning to look like an old photograph that someone forgot to coat with the preservative, but I wanted to set the record straight before we move on. Joe could have said he was a brain surgeon and it would not have mattered in the end. He got Obama to flat out admit his intentions, and that cannot be changed.

Good luck, Joe, we'll miss you. I wish we could have gotten to know Obama as intimately as we know you and Sarah Palin's children. Maybe one day the media will remember to do the entire job, but I won't hold my breath.

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