A really good analysis that makes the media look like a bunch of putzes:
Instead, the media responded to Joe the Plumber™ in the same basic way they responded to Joe Sixpack™: with a barely-disguised roll of the eyes. “Does Joe the Plumber know Joe Six-Pack?” asked Reuters. “‘Joe the Plumber’ becomes a national fixture,” declared the Los Angeles Times, barely able to contain its delight at its own pun-making. “Barack Obama looked like a prosecutor delivering a polished summation in a long civil case, Joe the Plumber v. George W. Bush,” wrote The New York Times. “This should forever be known as the Joe the Plumber Debate,” wrote The Washington Post. “Now We Know Joe Six Pack Is A Plumber,” declared TIME.
And:
Sure, you could say, the exchange [between Barack Obama and Joe Wurzelbacher] gained the traction it did because Obama happened to use the phrase “spread the wealth around” in the course of his discussion with Wurzelbacher, which—socialism alert!—made it spread like wildfire among conservative media outlets. And, sure, McCain is being cynical in framing Wurzelbacher’s situation as evidence of Obama’s desire for “class warfare,” as he did last night—and, generally, in framing himself as the working man’s only friend in Washington. Perhaps, taken together, the media have a reason to be jaundiced toward someone like Joe.
With the hammer:
How about to finding out roughly how many Americans are in situations roughly similar to Joe?” And while we’re asking those questions, it’s also worth wondering why, exactly, we have an impulse toward irony when it comes to people like Joe. And whether that impulse might just have something to do with the fact that so many Americans mistrust the media.
