Friday, October 17, 2008

Joe The Plumber and Rigoberta Menchu

I agree with all of this.

How did three weeks before the election did everyone become obsessed with Joe the Plumber? And what does this whole episode reveal about how the left will go after someone who happens to make The One look less than swell?

Remember this guy didn't seek out Barack Obama, Obama was doing a photo op in his neighborhood and Joe came out to ask a question. And now we're at the point where journalists and liberal bloggers are swarming all over this guy's personal background with an avidity that they haven't shown about Barack Obama's record and associates. Does he have a license? Is he registered to vote? Does he have tax liens? Is he related to Charles Keating? Is he a Republican?

They even posted his address on the internet. How low will these guys go to attack anyone who says anything that makes their guy look less than awesome...

For those on the left who think that this whole story is about Joe's personal background, let me put in in terms they should understand. Think of Joe as a symbolic construct whose situation is "fake but accurate." The left always seems to like that sort of approach to what they regard as underlying truths. Think of him as the left thought of Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature with her autobiography of how, as an indigenous Mayan, she and her family had suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Except it turns out that many of the details in her autobiography were fabrications. That didn't matter to the left or the Nobel Prize Committee because they regarded her story, true or not, as an essential expression of suffering that could have been true.


What is the real story here?

What matters is how Obama answered his question and what it revealed about his approach to redistribution of wealth. We're not about to elect Joe the Plumber.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I said this on a previous post and I will say it again on this one:

I am absolutely disgusted with the way the Left is attacking "Joe the Plumber." Attacking McCain or Palin is going to be part of the campaign. They both expected it and prepared for it. But to attack a man just because he dared to question the "Chosen One." Despicable.

Ellen K said...

The Democrats have been in the mode this season of not refuting the statements of the conservatives. Instead they resort to character assassination-with impunity from the media. Hacking into email accounts, revealing medical records, publishing phone numbers, pins, addresses. If this happened to the average citizen, they could sue. But because that would look bad to the media, conservative candidates and their supporters are literally threatened with bludgeoning by the power of the press. They are trying, and often succeeding, in silencing the conservative opinions of this nation. And then they are labeling it as "free speech". Well excuse me, if you can go out and label anything I say as racist or hatespeech because I choose not to support socialist candidates then you are just as much a fascist as any follower of any totalitarian regime. I am tired of it. I wonder if other people are as well.

Darren said...

I am, and I'd venture to guess that most readers of this blog are as well.

Ellen K said...

But here's the problem Darren. People are so afraid of publicly expressing their views that many conservatives are virtually isolated. That's a hard thing to overcome. There will be those who capitulate and vote against their own better judgment just to avoid confrontation. And that's scary because of just such a placating mentality, Germany in the 1930's became the nexus of horror for too many people. We are already seeing vitual genocide in many nations based on politics but masked by religion. What does it take to make people realize that this isn't a game show? Maybe the actions President Bush took to keep our nation from being attacked was a mistake, for in that calm, complacency flourished.

Anonymous said...

I'll go Darren one better.

I think that there's a pretty wide swath of the public that shares many of your sentiments Ellen. That's why Obama has to try to centrify himself, why welfare reform got passed, why affirmative action's been hammered most of the time it's put to a vote, why the anti-war left fell flat on its face when they tried to do a Vietnam redux and why Roe-v-Wade is far from "established law".

But the Democrats and the far left that's grabbed a hold of the party are very resourceful and they do have a variety of human weaknesses and shortcomings to manipulate. They won't stop so neither must we.