Where Have You Gone, Joe The Plumber? Our Nation Turns Its Loony Eyes To You
Officer James Crowley isn’t a household name yet, but he’s getting there. Crowley is the cop who arrested Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct in his own home, sparking an entirely predictable and tiresome culture war debate centering around race and justice. The usual suspects rallied around Mr. Crowley, declaring him a hero to their cause; he is already being talked up as the next Joe the Plumber.
But wait! What was wrong with the old one? Come to think of it, where is the old one?
It’s true, our bullet-headed everyman has been hard to find lately. The last we saw our steely-eyed protector of working-class values, he was a newly-minted war correspondent for Pajamas Media during last winter’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His qualifications? What are you, some kind of wise guy? He’s a straight-talking real American, buster, not one of those foreigner-loving squishes who work for the mainstream media. In Joe’s words, “I think media should be abolished, from ah, you know, reporting”.
Nothing so eloquently sums up the conflicting tensions that threaten to undermine the Fourth Estates’ responsibilities to our republic.
By late winter Joe was photographed wearing a hideous polypropylene garment called a Snuggie, which resembles a comfy, loose-fitting straitjacket. Members of the so-called conservative “movement” took turns having their pictures taken in them, presumably preparing for the day when they’d get to sport the real thing.
On April 15, he took part in a tea party protest in Michigan. In early May, he made a campaign appearance on behalf of New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan. Later that month, he weighed in on the gay marriage debate, telling Christianity Today, “People don't understand the dictionary--it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that.” He added that he has nothing against “queers”, even counts some as friends, not that he would let them anywhere near his kids. In response, Meghan McCain observed that Joe is “a dumbass.”
In June, he spoke at a political event in Wisconsin, where he asserted that the “founding fathers knew that socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism didn’t work.” This was especially prescient of the framers, since the first volume of Das Kapital wouldn’t be published for another 78 years.
Joe has certainly had his stolid face out there, so how come he’s not making headlines anymore?
It’s possible that the novelty has simply worn off. Joe’s heroic memoir, Joe the Plumber: Fighting For the American Dream, hit the bookshelves in December and sank without a trace; it’s currently ranked #123,687 in Amazon’s rankings. Joe’s iconic skull was also used to front a fundraising operation called Secure Our Dream, which blatantly asked for money without offering any specifics on how it was to be used. Alas, the secureourdream.com web address now appears to be unoccupied.
