That is the vernacular for someone who calls someone else up and orders them to do something, and the second person rolls over and does it, no questions asked, right?
Joe the Plumber, average Joe that he is, will call it like he sees it, no?
Sometimes "attention" shines the light on a fool and his likewise buddies.
14.
chris mohr
To think that but for one sheer random chance encounter with Obama at the end of last summer, when the Obama campaign could equally have chosen any of dozens of other similar streets in that or nearby towns in Ohio to be doing a street-meet-n-greet that day with voters, "Joe the Plumber" would today probably be interviewing for assistant manager positions in area Home Depots and Lowe’s to tide him over until contracting gigs picked up enough again. He’d be totally anonymous outside a circle of family and a couple dozen friends and area people who knew him casually through business or occasional social encounters. Which he will be again within almost totally within a few more months, except as an obcure historical footnote.
15.
Dave L
Joe and his backers will go on boycotting reality until it bends to their idea of what it should be. Until then, they’re "unhappy".
To think that but for one sheer random chance encounter with Obama at the end of last summer
I would love for somebody to ask this of Joe the Plumber:
"How can you be opposed to Barack Obama when you have benefitted so much from him? He is going to cut your taxes and he has given you a new career when your old one wasn’t going so well."
What an ungrateful shit!
18.
Comrade Stuck
but I refuse to put copyrighted material up that was copied FROM THE COMPANY I AM CURRENTLY UNDER CONTRACT WITH
The Irony, it burns.
19.
r€nato
well for those of you who can no longer see the video, here’s how it went:
Some fedora-wearing loser in a studio which looks like it belongs to cable public access, introduces Joe on what I take to be an Israeli street.
Joe has some Israeli guy standing next to him. He (repeatedly) tells a group of assembled reporters that he’s not the story, if they want the story they should interview this guy over here (you never actually see any interview with the presumably random Israeli-on-the-street).
Joe tells the reporters he’s not happy with them. He tells them they’re making out Israel to be the bad guy and showing too much sympathy for Palestinians. He asks them if they believe that Israel has a right to defend itself and protect its citizens. One reporter responds affirmatively. Joe asks him if he tells his viewers that. Reporter replies, "I’m a reporter."
End of piece. Not sure what was so special about the Israeli guy Joe thinks they should have been interviewing since the clip never showed the guy being interviewed. Maybe that’s some other video clip.
…oh yeah, Joe repeats his "I’m just an average guy" line.
Fucking shoot me. Please.
20.
calipygian
Not sure what was so special about the Israeli guy Joe thinks they should have been interviewing since the clip never showed the guy being interviewed.
The point isn’t that Israelis are crapping their pants on a daily basis because of Hamas rocket attacks and the point DEFINITELY isn’t that Palestinian civilians are putting up with conditions that wouldn’t be tolerated in the average American slaughterhouse.
The point is that Joe the Plumber is being used by Roger Simon as a not particularly sharp stick to poke the press in the eye and generate web traffic.
Somehow, Roger Simon building publicity and webtraffic on the bodies of dead Palestinians and Jews SHOULD be some sort of war crime.
21.
The Other Steve
I do not understand those videos. The first 5 seconds is a tribute to Hamas and Whackmack dinnerjacket of Iran.
@John Cole: Dude, this video is the very definition of fair use: a small clip for use of commentary or criticism.
Regardless, if I hadn’t seen JTP during the election I would suspect he is a Hammas-created, American version of Borat intended to make Americans look stupid and arrogant.
23.
TenguPhule
Even dumber than you’d expect
Unpossible!
24.
r€nato
Tim, since a subscription is required to view that particular PJTV video clip, I am thinking it’s not fair use to post it for free here.
Same principle by which Daily Show clips get pulled from YouTube as soon as they get posted.
(getting off topic… but whatev)
@r€nato: The video may very well be behind a subscription-only wall, or on a copy-protected DVD, or recorded via hidden camera without permission. That doesn’t change what fair use is.
I also think there is a reasonable difference between this JTP clip and posting the entire opening-until-the-first-commercial of TDS on Youtube that used to take place with regularity. One is defensible, the other much less so.
(and John, I freaking love the ability to edit posts after I make them so as to find and correct the many typos I missed. Thank you.)
I’m not sure if he realizes that the US and Israel are 2 different countries.
I mean, he must be aware that he’s standing in a different land, but everything he spouts are wingnut talking points about the USA.
Either that or he thinks he’s in Iraq.
29.
kay
Joe the plumber would laugh at me, and rightfully so, if I arrived at the job site and announced I was a plumber. I’m not a plumber. I don’t know how to do that.
Why is ok for Joe the Plumber to arrive in the middle east, and announce he’s a war correspondent? He’s not. He doesn’t have any context, or contacts, because he hasn’t earned any.
What’s the point of this? To prove that experience and specific knowledge in a job or profession don’t matter? We made half-assed and amateur the new "best"? Great. That was a worthwhile exercise.
We should all remember that John Cole and Joe the Plumber both get paid money by the same advertiser, as John stated in comment 12.
Therefore, I think that John should start going tribalist on the moonbats that frequent this blog, and kick them off if they mock Joe the Plumber. This is because Joe the Plumber will be the detergent in the great sack of clothes that we call, "Pajamas Media." Mr. Cole, being the tye-dye with mustard stains, is allowed to have his eccentric moments, yet he still needs to be cleaned up with some detergent.
If and when the detergent runs out, John can start showing off again on the clothesline while the detergent smell evaporates. Until Joe the Plumber quits bringing in the dough for John, however, it would be prudent of him to silence those who attempt to incorrectly mix the clothes.
31.
r€nato
Why is ok for Joe the Plumber to arrive in the middle east, and announce he’s a war correspondent?
this sort of discrimination and put-down of regular, everyday folks in the pro-America parts of the country is why you liberal elitists will continue to lose elections forever.
…oh, right.
32.
calipygian
If and when the detergent runs out, John can start showing off again on the clothesline while the detergent smell evaporates. Until Joe the Plumber quits bringing in the dough for John, however, it would be prudent of him to silence those who attempt to incorrectly mix the clothes.
Are you trying to say that JTP is some sort of shit stain on the boxer-briefs of the body politic?
33.
demimondian
@kay: It’s the logical conclusion of the cult of the amateur.
34.
r€nato
Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize killed irony.
The Bush/GOP reign of error 2001-2009 killed satire.
And now Objective Scrutator has killed metaphors.
35.
SpotWeld
I can accept conservatism as a political philosophy. (Especailly fiscal). I can accept political opposition. I can even accept the fact the incoming administration is probably going deserve some serious criticism at some point.
Joe the Plumber is a celebration of how much fun it is to be an @sshole. In the sense of "how funny would it be to give a kid a gift wrapped turd for Christmas" sort of @sshole.
Joe tells the reporters he’s not happy with them. He tells them they’re making out Israel to be the bad guy and showing too much sympathy for Palestinians. He asks them if they believe that Israel has a right to defend itself and protect its citizens. One reporter responds affirmatively. Joe asks him if he tells his viewers that. Reporter replies, "I’m a reporter."
OK, I understand the scam now.
1. Plunger Jockey* Joe’s trip to Israel proves that reporting stuff is easy. All you have to do is just ask some questions and anyone can do that.
2. The strangely anonymous reporters who have time to follow Joe around during a frickin’ war provide an enemy that isn’t heavily armed.
3. 1 + 2 = Viewer thinks: Why look, if (avert your eyes r€nato) "I’m just an average guy" Joe weren’t there getting the real story, those nasty reporters (seriously, where are they from?) would be tearing down our friends the Israel people and supporting Hammass.
4. Viewer tosses his TV out of the window and gets all of his news from PJTV.
*H/T Betty Cracker.
40.
r€nato
Glenn, I think it’s his affiliation with PJM is an artifact left over from John’s days before the Schiavo-inspired self-deprogramming.
Look at it this way, he’s using PJM money to fund a blog which regularly holds the right up to ridicule. There’s something to be admired in that kind of subversion.
I think Joe the Plumber is a stunt, but I refuse to put copyrighted material up that was copied FROM THE COMPANY I AM CURRENTLY UNDER CONTRACT WITH.
Since you have a contract with them, don’t you have publishing or licensing rights to that material – as long as you’re publishing it on their network (which your site is part of)?
Why the fuck is Cole with PM? Did they film him having sex with male prostitutes? Who were also terrorists?
They pay him more than blogads would and they don’t exercise any editorial control at all. Basically PJ is paying John to mock them, which should amuse you guys. Me, I don’t get paid and I don’t pay anything so it’s all the same as far as I’m concerned.
44.
The Other Steve
From Larry King’s interview with Bush:
"During the course of this presidency, I’ve been disappointed at times by the silly name-calling that goes on in Washington — it’s really not necessary," Bush said.
"I’ve done my best, though, to make sure I didn’t bring the presidency down to that level."
Been driving that point home since Jan 20 2001, with a reprise on Jan 20 2005 and a riff on Sept. 3 2008.
46.
r€nato
the thing that gets me about this stupid JTP stunt is that there are some real war zone journalists out there like CNN’s Michael Ware and the guy from NPR who came within seconds of being car-bombed in Baghdad recently.
These people aren’t wandering around with an Israeli minder and military escort in a US-friendly country, their asses are totally hanging to the wind so that they can bring us the real story.
If Joe wants to prove what a real man he is, let him go into a real war zone. Let him go to Gaza and bring us a story from there. Believe it or not, Palestinians are human beings too and Israeli bombs do not magically kill only the ‘terrorists’.
47.
grimc
Joe the plumber would laugh at me, and rightfully so, if I arrived at the job site and announced I was a plumber. I’m not a plumber. I don’t know how to do that.
Joe Wienerschnitzel isn’t a plumber, either. He was some sort of unregistered, unlicensed laborer that did some sort of work for an actual plumber.
Actually, I’m a little surprised that nobody has come forward to sue the crap out of the plumber that ol’ Joe worked for. If he actually did plumbing work, and his employers advertised themselves as licensed and bonded, well, isn’t the lawsuit evident?
I am with them because they have been a great company for me. You all may not like their content, but I can tell you, they are really a good company to deal with. Their tech support and blogger outreach folks are pleasant and helpful, they place no demands on me, and have really been great.
Every advertising portal should be as good to the blogger as these guys are to me. I have no idea if they will resign me, but if they don’t I will not leave bitter. They kept every promise to me that they ever made, and I do my best to fulfill my end of the contract.
This is how they come to the place where they confidently trash whole professions and jobs. Judges, teachers, community organizers, auto workers, government employees of all stripes…
They must assume they can do any of those jobs BETTER than the people who spend whole careers doing them.
Here is the recurring stupidet part part of "teh stupid". JTP keeps referring to the journalists over there covering the Gaza incursion as if they are in the exact same situation as the journalists from here that covered the Iraq war.
He keeps railing against embedded journos but there aren’t any over there. He keeps railing about journos giving away the Israeli’s military positions, but that only happened on his favorite channel FauxNoos. And he goes on and on about his view that the military shouldn’t have to talk to reporters and that the media folks keep repeating the death toll numbers, apparently TOTALLY unaware that those numbers are coming from everybody BUT the Israelis.
Joe The Plumber is working out exactly as intended. Look how much attention he has generated.
How often was Pajamas Media mentioned on CNN before this?
Bingo! The only bad press is no press.
58.
ricky
I only discovered Pajamas telly by being a late in life father. My little boy loved those rascally Bananas and their antics. Too bad about the English accents.
I have no idea if they will resign me, but if they don’t I will not leave bitter. [PJM] kept every promise to me that they ever made, and I do my best to fulfill my end of the contract.
Despite any other arguments I have with their content, it’s good to hear that they’ve been an honest business partner.
I can’t imagine that they’d retire your site. It may well be one of their most profitable these days.
@Ninerdave: I think that Roger was actually trying Joe out as a columnist for Politico. Given the quality of his reporting, he’s a shoe-in now.
62.
grimc
@zuzu’s
Wow, 15 years? I hadn’t heard that part.
Anyway, it’s the "striving" that’s important. He tried to get his license, but no doubt it was libruls, yewyuns, the gubmint and the meedyuh that prevented him from realizing the American dream. Same as Bush really wanted to land his plane in Baton Rouge after Katrina, but somebody else was to blame.
But hey, they tried. And their failures are completely due to forces beyond their control.
63.
ricky
r€nato @ 19
…oh yeah, Joe repeats his "I’m just an average guy" line.
Fucking shoot me. Please.
Can’t we have your wish executed on the real perpetrator and keep you around at least till the Cards clock your latin laden birdies?
64.
r€nato
Can’t we have your wish executed on the real perpetrator and keep you around at least till the Cards clock your latin laden birdies?
Dude… Cartago delenda est… look it up and then tell me which team I’m rooting for!
If John brainwashes people into hating Joe the Plumber, then less and less people will be tuning in to hear Joe the Plumber, and less people listening to Joe means less people advertising for PJTV.
Joe the Plumber is going to rake in the dough for you, John. Don’t blow it all by succumbing to the moonbat modus operandi.
Are you trying to say that JTP is some sort of shit stain on the boxer-briefs of the body politic?
No. Like a detergent brings a cheerful, clean smell to clothing, JTP will be bringing in all the advertisers, which will start paying bigger bucks to PJTV.
And now Objective Scrutator has killed metaphors.
I am honored to be in such excellent company, although President Bush and Henry Kissinger would definitely comprise the manufacturers of the clothes, while I would be best described as a patriotic citizen that loves to go shopping for the clothes, so that we can beat the terrorists.
66.
r€nato
They must assume they can do any of those jobs BETTER than the people who spend whole careers doing them.
Hey, if an ‘everyman’ like Bush can be such a magnificent president, why shouldn’t they think that an ‘everyman’ like Not-Joe the Not-A-Plumber can be a journalist?
67.
Joshua Norton
Cartago delenda est
The pain! The horror! Latin 101. A play on "Carthage must destroyed", N’est pas?.
Joe the Plumber certainly has more credibility than the media does. The media mutants put on their perfume behind closed doors and then start chugging lattes, while Joe the Plumber is on the scene, sees Palestinian terrorists daily, and is struggling to obtain acceptable water. Basically, he’s living the same lifestyle that the average American is living.
69.
ricky
See how quickly they jump on a mistake in the sports arena?
I gave up Latin when the blood of Jeebus didn;t run from my mouth like the nuns promised it would if I chewed during first communion. I only worry if my delendo lasts longer than four hours.
He dropped his lifelong dream of owning a plumbing business about 20 minutes after Obama left.
He could have gotten certified and parlayed his new-found fame as a plumber into an actual plumbing business. That would make sense, and it’s consistent with his whole line of BS. Instead he’s running around Israel playing war correspondent.
All the wingnut boys come to the yard for his milkshake?
.
74.
ricky
Hey, if an ‘everyman’ like Bush can be such a magnificent president, why shouldn’t they think that an ‘everyman’ like Not-Joe the Not-A-Plumber can be a journalist?
Especially after Tim the Garbage Man’s Son and Chris the Hack paved the way.
Joe the Plumber certainly has more credibility than the media does.
Holy shit, Objectivist Scrotum has a point.
I mean, who’s worse: JTP, or the assholes who gave him a megaphone?
.
76.
Montysano
"Dumber than you’d expect"? Nah, this seems about right.
Smarter than I expect? That would be BO, who had dinner tonight with George Will, Bill Kristol, C. Krauthammer, among others. If you look at the Rick Warren pick, then at tonight’s dinner, you see the pattern. Engage the other side, try to bring it back to ideas instead of ideology. Cynics will carp about it, but so far I like what I see.
And as J. Cole has already noted, I like seeing disagreement among the Dems. Call it the "circular firing squad" if you like, but it seems healthy to me.
77.
Keith Patrick
…oh yeah, Joe repeats his "I’m just an average guy" line.
Kinda reminds me of the old SNL "Caveman Lawyer" skit.
78.
ricky
Smarter than I expect? That would be BO, who had dinner tonight with George Will, Bill Kristol, C. Krauthammer, among others.
It is funny how people ignore the role Tiger Woods played in making fried chicken acceptable to the Country Club crowd.
sees Palestinian terrorists daily, and is struggling to obtain acceptable water.
No shit! I live in Appalachia and the water here is so tainted by mine tailings all the frogs got 5 legs. But we don’t see no Palestinian terrorists ’round here. We see a few Klan boys and crazy bible-thumpers on every corner, but that those is the only terrorists we git to see.
So, this website doesn’t render in IE 8 on windows 7.
Here’s my User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
I get the content (or at least most of it, but it just shows up as a blank white page. Compatability mode fixes it.
89.
Conservatively Liberal
Well, PJTV pretends to be delivering the news, he pretended to be a plumber, PJTV needs someone to pretend they are doing the news, and now he is pretending to be a journalist. It sort of completes the circle jerk.
Fix’t moar bettah.
This is because Joe the Plumber will be the detergentdiarrhea in the great sack of clothesshit that we call, "Pajamas Media."
Ditto.
Are you trying to say that JTP is some sort of shit stain on the boxer-briefs of the body politic?
F’ing WIN. Thread over.
90.
Cain
So in a way, JTP is really helping to fund BJ cuz all that revenue is being spent on BJ which as I understand generates a shitload of traffic compared to say Red State I bet. Haven’t we eclipsed them?
cain
91.
Nancy Irving
Israel might want to start looking at the type of supporters it’s attracting.
So I clicked on the video, and was told that seeing it required the Basic Package, which allows "access to the low quality videos on the site". Gotta admire their honesty.
It’s not the same Roger Simon. The PJTV guy is Roger L. Simon, a Hollywood writer responsible for such sublime artistic gems as "Scenes from a Mall. I assume he’s the fedora guy people are mentioning in the video.
Roger Simon of Politico lacks a fedora but possesses a pornstache.
God, the comments at the guy’s article are priceless. Hard to pick a winner, but this one shines:
Trivia: Edward R. Murrow graduated from a land-grant college 8 miles from the land-grant college that Sarah Palin received her journalism degree from. And yet, Murrow is an icon.
Um…. Australian accents, thankyou… One of our greatest cultural exports.
100.
Abe Fucking Lincoln
About the Timothy Geitner nomination, I just saw a clip of Harry Reid say he "is not concerned" about his confirmation, which means that should just withdraw his name now and get it over with. Expect another fail.
What? Is it supposed to be scary in Sderot? As opposed to, you know, a real war zone?
103.
Notorious P.A.T.
teh
Don’t. There’s enough ignorance in this world without adding to it, even in irony.
104.
Comrade Darkness
Joe thinks he can jump into journalism because his sphere of knowledge is microscopic, and to the simple-minded, what you don’t know about something cannot possibly exceed the surface of your current sphere. So, he just thinks he needs to learn a teeny tiny bit and he’ll be the greatest ever.
Most people when they learn more, realize the sphere of applicable unknowns has grown. Given that he never made it to licensed in the field he’s worked in for years, it’s possible he’s too dense to have noticed this effect.
105.
crack
I boycotted B-J for a while because I didn’t want to fund PJM through ad hits. I love the site but I’ll probably leave again because I really don’t want to fund PJM and JTP through my actions. It’s like how I boycott subway because I hate their ads.
Seriously, what is Pajamas Media thinking making Joe the Plumber a war correspondent? Do they want to be a joke? If I were a conservative, I’d be pissed with them for making it more difficult to take conservatives seriously.
107.
demimondian
@crack: I recommend NoScript. You can selectively kill the PJM ads.
I imagine that if somebody with real haxx0r credz took it on, he or she could write a Greasemonkey script which would increment the view count, and then move the image off-screen. That would be illegal and fraudulent, though, so nobody should actually do it.
108.
Rick Taylor
On a positive note, John, aren’t you happy you left the Republicans, so you’re not stuck defending defending conservatives from liberals using Palin and Joe to mock them?
Which is why I think it has fail written all over it.
Watch and mock the guy for free? Heck yeah. But folks are a little more selective about what they’re gonna spend money on…and JTP infotainment ain’t very high on the list.
110.
Karen
To Kay #72
"He could have gotten certified and parlayed his new-found fame as a plumber into an actual plumbing business."
No, he couldn’t have. To work as an actual plumber, you have to have a license. That takes having the documented time as a registered apprentice & passing the test to get a Journeyman license. You actually have to know how to do it to pass those tests. Then you can have your own company & the insurance that’s required. JTP could be a handyman, maybe.
I know this because my husband is a 30 year plumber. We do have our own company.
111.
ricky
@ Tattoosydney
They are a terrific export. Beats heck out of the BeeGees and Mel Gibson…oops, he’s recycling, not export.
Demimondian, do you practice at being a moron, or is it a real disability? I mean, someone gets something wrong, and you not only "correct" him with something wrong, but you follow it with an insult that could as a result describe you as well.
r€nato
Philadelphia AquilaeJoe the Plumber delenda est.demimondian
@r€nato: That’d be _delendo_, you insufferable Philistine.
r€nato
thank you for slamming PJTV on a PJ-affiliated blog. Awesome.
1) Who is the guy who thinks wearing a fedora in the studio looks really good?
2) What exactly does Joe the Plumber think he proved with that clip? That he knows how to be a dick?
Comrade Stuck
Joe’s not real happy with teh media. Life is hard Joe, then you show your ass, and die.
r€nato
christ if I have to hear that "I’m just an average guy" shtick one more time from Edward R. Moron…
calipygian
So bad, that PJTV appears to have hidden their performance art behind a subscription only wall.
How can they get the average Joe’s word out if you have to register to see it?
John Cole
Joe The Plumber is working out exactly as intended. Look how much attention he has generated.
How often was Pajamas Media mentioned on CNN before this?
Absurd
Well, he pretended to be a plumber, and now he is pretending to be a journalist. It sort of completes the circle.
LanceThruster
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
We gots themz!
bayville
Joe/Palin, 2012.
calipygian
An average, beer-swilling guy like myself would say that Olmert said in public that Dubya was his sniviling little bitch.
That is the vernacular for someone who calls someone else up and orders them to do something, and the second person rolls over and does it, no questions asked, right?
Joe the Plumber, average Joe that he is, will call it like he sees it, no?
John Cole
BTW- I took down the video.
I think Joe the Plumber is a stunt, but I refuse to put copyrighted material up that was copied FROM THE COMPANY I AM CURRENTLY UNDER CONTRACT WITH.
Comrade Stuck
@John Cole:
Sometimes "attention" shines the light on a fool and his likewise buddies.
chris mohr
To think that but for one sheer random chance encounter with Obama at the end of last summer, when the Obama campaign could equally have chosen any of dozens of other similar streets in that or nearby towns in Ohio to be doing a street-meet-n-greet that day with voters, "Joe the Plumber" would today probably be interviewing for assistant manager positions in area Home Depots and Lowe’s to tide him over until contracting gigs picked up enough again. He’d be totally anonymous outside a circle of family and a couple dozen friends and area people who knew him casually through business or occasional social encounters. Which he will be again within almost totally within a few more months, except as an obcure historical footnote.
Dave L
Joe and his backers will go on boycotting reality until it bends to their idea of what it should be. Until then, they’re "unhappy".
Let’s keep it that way.
cleek
@John Cole:
which is why i like to call him Joe Wurlitzer
r€nato
I would love for somebody to ask this of Joe the Plumber:
"How can you be opposed to Barack Obama when you have benefitted so much from him? He is going to cut your taxes and he has given you a new career when your old one wasn’t going so well."
What an ungrateful shit!
Comrade Stuck
The Irony, it burns.
r€nato
well for those of you who can no longer see the video, here’s how it went:
Some fedora-wearing loser in a studio which looks like it belongs to cable public access, introduces Joe on what I take to be an Israeli street.
Joe has some Israeli guy standing next to him. He (repeatedly) tells a group of assembled reporters that he’s not the story, if they want the story they should interview this guy over here (you never actually see any interview with the presumably random Israeli-on-the-street).
Joe tells the reporters he’s not happy with them. He tells them they’re making out Israel to be the bad guy and showing too much sympathy for Palestinians. He asks them if they believe that Israel has a right to defend itself and protect its citizens. One reporter responds affirmatively. Joe asks him if he tells his viewers that. Reporter replies, "I’m a reporter."
End of piece. Not sure what was so special about the Israeli guy Joe thinks they should have been interviewing since the clip never showed the guy being interviewed. Maybe that’s some other video clip.
…oh yeah, Joe repeats his "I’m just an average guy" line.
Fucking shoot me. Please.
calipygian
The point isn’t that Israelis are crapping their pants on a daily basis because of Hamas rocket attacks and the point DEFINITELY isn’t that Palestinian civilians are putting up with conditions that wouldn’t be tolerated in the average American slaughterhouse.
The point is that Joe the Plumber is being used by Roger Simon as a not particularly sharp stick to poke the press in the eye and generate web traffic.
Somehow, Roger Simon building publicity and webtraffic on the bodies of dead Palestinians and Jews SHOULD be some sort of war crime.
The Other Steve
I do not understand those videos. The first 5 seconds is a tribute to Hamas and Whackmack dinnerjacket of Iran.
who the fuck thought that was a good idea?
Tim in SF
@John Cole: Dude, this video is the very definition of fair use: a small clip for use of commentary or criticism.
Regardless, if I hadn’t seen JTP during the election I would suspect he is a Hammas-created, American version of Borat intended to make Americans look stupid and arrogant.
TenguPhule
Unpossible!
r€nato
Tim, since a subscription is required to view that particular PJTV video clip, I am thinking it’s not fair use to post it for free here.
Same principle by which Daily Show clips get pulled from YouTube as soon as they get posted.
Rosali
I refuse to subscribe or register.
Tim in SF
(getting off topic… but whatev)
@r€nato: The video may very well be behind a subscription-only wall, or on a copy-protected DVD, or recorded via hidden camera without permission. That doesn’t change what fair use is.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
I also think there is a reasonable difference between this JTP clip and posting the entire opening-until-the-first-commercial of TDS on Youtube that used to take place with regularity. One is defensible, the other much less so.
(and John, I freaking love the ability to edit posts after I make them so as to find and correct the many typos I missed. Thank you.)
ELTV
@bayville: It’s ‘The Cleavage Ticket’.
Joshua Norton
I’m not sure if he realizes that the US and Israel are 2 different countries.
I mean, he must be aware that he’s standing in a different land, but everything he spouts are wingnut talking points about the USA.
Either that or he thinks he’s in Iraq.
kay
Joe the plumber would laugh at me, and rightfully so, if I arrived at the job site and announced I was a plumber. I’m not a plumber. I don’t know how to do that.
Why is ok for Joe the Plumber to arrive in the middle east, and announce he’s a war correspondent? He’s not. He doesn’t have any context, or contacts, because he hasn’t earned any.
What’s the point of this? To prove that experience and specific knowledge in a job or profession don’t matter? We made half-assed and amateur the new "best"? Great. That was a worthwhile exercise.
Objective Scrutator
We should all remember that John Cole and Joe the Plumber both get paid money by the same advertiser, as John stated in comment 12.
Therefore, I think that John should start going tribalist on the moonbats that frequent this blog, and kick them off if they mock Joe the Plumber. This is because Joe the Plumber will be the detergent in the great sack of clothes that we call, "Pajamas Media." Mr. Cole, being the tye-dye with mustard stains, is allowed to have his eccentric moments, yet he still needs to be cleaned up with some detergent.
If and when the detergent runs out, John can start showing off again on the clothesline while the detergent smell evaporates. Until Joe the Plumber quits bringing in the dough for John, however, it would be prudent of him to silence those who attempt to incorrectly mix the clothes.
r€nato
this sort of discrimination and put-down of regular, everyday folks in the pro-America parts of the country is why you liberal elitists will continue to lose elections forever.
…oh, right.
calipygian
Are you trying to say that JTP is some sort of shit stain on the boxer-briefs of the body politic?
demimondian
@kay: It’s the logical conclusion of the cult of the amateur.
r€nato
Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize killed irony.
The Bush/GOP reign of error 2001-2009 killed satire.
And now Objective Scrutator has killed metaphors.
SpotWeld
I can accept conservatism as a political philosophy. (Especailly fiscal). I can accept political opposition. I can even accept the fact the incoming administration is probably going deserve some serious criticism at some point.
Joe the Plumber is a celebration of how much fun it is to be an @sshole. In the sense of "how funny would it be to give a kid a gift wrapped turd for Christmas" sort of @sshole.
Andre
I keep watching this guy and thinking he’s really some kind of reverse Borat.
Glenn Fayard
Why the fuck is Cole with PM? Did they film him having sex with male prostitutes? Who were also terrorists?
JGabriel
Rosali:
So do I.
My take on it is: DougJ watches PJ TV so we don’t have to.
.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@r€nato: Thanks. I think.
OK, I understand the scam now.
1. Plunger Jockey* Joe’s trip to Israel proves that reporting stuff is easy. All you have to do is just ask some questions and anyone can do that.
2. The strangely anonymous reporters who have time to follow Joe around during a frickin’ war provide an enemy that isn’t heavily armed.
3. 1 + 2 = Viewer thinks: Why look, if (avert your eyes r€nato) "I’m just an average guy" Joe weren’t there getting the real story, those nasty reporters (seriously, where are they from?) would be tearing down our friends the Israel people and supporting Hammass.
4. Viewer tosses his TV out of the window and gets all of his news from PJTV.
*H/T Betty Cracker.
r€nato
Glenn, I think it’s his affiliation with PJM is an artifact left over from John’s days before the Schiavo-inspired self-deprogramming.
Look at it this way, he’s using PJM money to fund a blog which regularly holds the right up to ridicule. There’s something to be admired in that kind of subversion.
JGabriel
calipygian:
Yep. George W. Bush = Olmert’s Poodle.
.
JGabriel
@John Cole:
Since you have a contract with them, don’t you have publishing or licensing rights to that material – as long as you’re publishing it on their network (which your site is part of)?
.
Tim F.
They pay him more than blogads would and they don’t exercise any editorial control at all. Basically PJ is paying John to mock them, which should amuse you guys. Me, I don’t get paid and I don’t pay anything so it’s all the same as far as I’m concerned.
The Other Steve
From Larry King’s interview with Bush:
LOL!
binzinerator
@kay:
Been driving that point home since Jan 20 2001, with a reprise on Jan 20 2005 and a riff on Sept. 3 2008.
r€nato
the thing that gets me about this stupid JTP stunt is that there are some real war zone journalists out there like CNN’s Michael Ware and the guy from NPR who came within seconds of being car-bombed in Baghdad recently.
These people aren’t wandering around with an Israeli minder and military escort in a US-friendly country, their asses are totally hanging to the wind so that they can bring us the real story.
If Joe wants to prove what a real man he is, let him go into a real war zone. Let him go to Gaza and bring us a story from there. Believe it or not, Palestinians are human beings too and Israeli bombs do not magically kill only the ‘terrorists’.
grimc
Joe Wienerschnitzel isn’t a plumber, either. He was some sort of unregistered, unlicensed laborer that did some sort of work for an actual plumber.
Actually, I’m a little surprised that nobody has come forward to sue the crap out of the plumber that ol’ Joe worked for. If he actually did plumbing work, and his employers advertised themselves as licensed and bonded, well, isn’t the lawsuit evident?
binzinerator
@Objective Scrotum:
Fix’t.
Zuzu's Petals
@JGabriel:
Me three. I hate that I even ended up on their site. More affirmation for Roger and his scam.
DougJ
That’s the beauty of this whole thing. PJTV may as well be an intentional spoof.
John Cole
I am with them because they have been a great company for me. You all may not like their content, but I can tell you, they are really a good company to deal with. Their tech support and blogger outreach folks are pleasant and helpful, they place no demands on me, and have really been great.
Every advertising portal should be as good to the blogger as these guys are to me. I have no idea if they will resign me, but if they don’t I will not leave bitter. They kept every promise to me that they ever made, and I do my best to fulfill my end of the contract.
Zuzu's Petals
@The Other Steve:
Hmm, and how many times did he refer to the "Democrat Party"?
JGabriel
r€nato:
Or Peshawar. I would give Joe two weeks, max, before they pull a Danny Pearl on him.
How much ransom do you think PJM would pay?
.
kay
@demimondian:
This is how they come to the place where they confidently trash whole professions and jobs. Judges, teachers, community organizers, auto workers, government employees of all stripes…
They must assume they can do any of those jobs BETTER than the people who spend whole careers doing them.
sgwhiteinfla
Here is the recurring stupidet part part of "teh stupid". JTP keeps referring to the journalists over there covering the Gaza incursion as if they are in the exact same situation as the journalists from here that covered the Iraq war.
He keeps railing against embedded journos but there aren’t any over there. He keeps railing about journos giving away the Israeli’s military positions, but that only happened on his favorite channel FauxNoos. And he goes on and on about his view that the military shouldn’t have to talk to reporters and that the media folks keep repeating the death toll numbers, apparently TOTALLY unaware that those numbers are coming from everybody BUT the Israelis.
What a fukin maroon.
Zuzu's Petals
@grimc:
What I can’t get over is how a guy who "apprenticed" for 15 YEARS kept spouting off about striving for the "American Dream."
And how the ONLY thing keeping him from achieving it would be a hypothetical return to an earlier tax rate on his exaggerated hypothetical earnings.
Ninerdave
@John Cole:
Bingo! The only bad press is no press.
ricky
I only discovered Pajamas telly by being a late in life father. My little boy loved those rascally Bananas and their antics. Too bad about the English accents.
demimondian
@binzinerator:
Palin’s acceptance speech?
JGabriel
@John Cole:
Despite any other arguments I have with their content, it’s good to hear that they’ve been an honest business partner.
I can’t imagine that they’d retire your site. It may well be one of their most profitable these days.
.
demimondian
@Ninerdave: I think that Roger was actually trying Joe out as a columnist for Politico. Given the quality of his reporting, he’s a shoe-in now.
grimc
@zuzu’s
Wow, 15 years? I hadn’t heard that part.
Anyway, it’s the "striving" that’s important. He tried to get his license, but no doubt it was libruls, yewyuns, the gubmint and the meedyuh that prevented him from realizing the American dream. Same as Bush really wanted to land his plane in Baton Rouge after Katrina, but somebody else was to blame.
But hey, they tried. And their failures are completely due to forces beyond their control.
ricky
r€nato @ 19
Can’t we have your wish executed on the real perpetrator and keep you around at least till the Cards clock your latin laden birdies?
r€nato
Dude… Cartago delenda est… look it up and then tell me which team I’m rooting for!
Objective Scrutator
If John brainwashes people into hating Joe the Plumber, then less and less people will be tuning in to hear Joe the Plumber, and less people listening to Joe means less people advertising for PJTV.
Joe the Plumber is going to rake in the dough for you, John. Don’t blow it all by succumbing to the moonbat modus operandi.
No. Like a detergent brings a cheerful, clean smell to clothing, JTP will be bringing in all the advertisers, which will start paying bigger bucks to PJTV.
I am honored to be in such excellent company, although President Bush and Henry Kissinger would definitely comprise the manufacturers of the clothes, while I would be best described as a patriotic citizen that loves to go shopping for the clothes, so that we can beat the terrorists.
r€nato
Hey, if an ‘everyman’ like Bush can be such a magnificent president, why shouldn’t they think that an ‘everyman’ like Not-Joe the Not-A-Plumber can be a journalist?
Joshua Norton
The pain! The horror! Latin 101. A play on "Carthage must destroyed", N’est pas?.
Objective Scrutator
Joe the Plumber certainly has more credibility than the media does. The media mutants put on their perfume behind closed doors and then start chugging lattes, while Joe the Plumber is on the scene, sees Palestinian terrorists daily, and is struggling to obtain acceptable water. Basically, he’s living the same lifestyle that the average American is living.
ricky
See how quickly they jump on a mistake in the sports arena?
I gave up Latin when the blood of Jeebus didn;t run from my mouth like the nuns promised it would if I chewed during first communion. I only worry if my delendo lasts longer than four hours.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@grimc: Whatever work he does [did] is [was] legal in Ohio.
Ash Can
Who put a quarter in Objective Whoozits? Dude’s in rare form tonight.
kay
@grimc:
He dropped his lifelong dream of owning a plumbing business about 20 minutes after Obama left.
He could have gotten certified and parlayed his new-found fame as a plumber into an actual plumbing business. That would make sense, and it’s consistent with his whole line of BS. Instead he’s running around Israel playing war correspondent.
JGabriel
@Objective Scrutator:
All the wingnut boys come to the yard for his milkshake?
.
ricky
Especially after Tim the Garbage Man’s Son and Chris the Hack paved the way.
JGabriel
Objective Scrutator:
Holy shit, Objectivist Scrotum has a point.
I mean, who’s worse: JTP, or the assholes who gave him a megaphone?
.
Montysano
"Dumber than you’d expect"? Nah, this seems about right.
Smarter than I expect? That would be BO, who had dinner tonight with George Will, Bill Kristol, C. Krauthammer, among others. If you look at the Rick Warren pick, then at tonight’s dinner, you see the pattern. Engage the other side, try to bring it back to ideas instead of ideology. Cynics will carp about it, but so far I like what I see.
And as J. Cole has already noted, I like seeing disagreement among the Dems. Call it the "circular firing squad" if you like, but it seems healthy to me.
Keith Patrick
Kinda reminds me of the old SNL "Caveman Lawyer" skit.
ricky
It is funny how people ignore the role Tiger Woods played in making fried chicken acceptable to the Country Club crowd.
JGabriel
Montysano:
The man who’s usually right in the same room as the man who’s always wrong?
I fear for Obama’s life. If he Kristol shake hands, or even touch, there might be some sort of matter/anti-matter explosion.
.
Zuzu's Petals
@grimc:
That’s what he told Obama.
Unless, of course, he was lying about that too.
sgwhiteinfla
As JTP said,"War is Hell"
demimondian
@JGabriel:
Fixt
grimc
@kay
I hope you’re not forgetting his dreams of a musical career before his foray into journalism, ’cause that’s just too awesome not to mention.
To be honest, I look forward to his entire career arc: From pipe-handler, to war correspondent, to a 3-round exhibition bout with Tonya Harding.
ricky
And that would relegate T. Blair to what? Rat terrier?
JGabriel
Dog Tick.
.
Bootlegger
@Objective Scrutator:
No shit! I live in Appalachia and the water here is so tainted by mine tailings all the frogs got 5 legs. But we don’t see no Palestinian terrorists ’round here. We see a few Klan boys and crazy bible-thumpers on every corner, but that those is the only terrorists we git to see.
demimondian
@ricky: Canine hemorrhoid.
bago
So, this website doesn’t render in IE 8 on windows 7.
Here’s my User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
I get the content (or at least most of it, but it just shows up as a blank white page. Compatability mode fixes it.
Conservatively Liberal
Fix’t moar bettah.
Ditto.
F’ing WIN. Thread over.
Cain
So in a way, JTP is really helping to fund BJ cuz all that revenue is being spent on BJ which as I understand generates a shitload of traffic compared to say Red State I bet. Haven’t we eclipsed them?
cain
Nancy Irving
Israel might want to start looking at the type of supporters it’s attracting.
binzinerator
@demimondian:
Yes.
Mike
So I clicked on the video, and was told that seeing it required the Basic Package, which allows "access to the low quality videos on the site". Gotta admire their honesty.
Perry Como
Joe the Plumber is Sacha Baron Cohen’s newest character.
Josh E.
@demimondian:
It’s not the same Roger Simon. The PJTV guy is Roger L. Simon, a Hollywood writer responsible for such sublime artistic gems as "Scenes from a Mall. I assume he’s the fedora guy people are mentioning in the video.
Roger Simon of Politico lacks a fedora but possesses a pornstache.
Zuzu's Petals
@Josh E.:
God, the comments at the guy’s article are priceless. Hard to pick a winner, but this one shines:
Ecks
I’d like to see you try to get Blagojovich to agree with that one.
harlana pepper
Hmm, it’s asking me to register first.
Tattoosydney
@ricky:
Um…. Australian accents, thankyou… One of our greatest cultural exports.
Abe Fucking Lincoln
About the Timothy Geitner nomination, I just saw a clip of Harry Reid say he "is not concerned" about his confirmation, which means that should just withdraw his name now and get it over with. Expect another fail.
Paul L.
So when is true journalist Glenn Greenwald going to Sderot, Israel?
El Cid
What? Is it supposed to be scary in Sderot? As opposed to, you know, a real war zone?
Notorious P.A.T.
Don’t. There’s enough ignorance in this world without adding to it, even in irony.
Comrade Darkness
Joe thinks he can jump into journalism because his sphere of knowledge is microscopic, and to the simple-minded, what you don’t know about something cannot possibly exceed the surface of your current sphere. So, he just thinks he needs to learn a teeny tiny bit and he’ll be the greatest ever.
Most people when they learn more, realize the sphere of applicable unknowns has grown. Given that he never made it to licensed in the field he’s worked in for years, it’s possible he’s too dense to have noticed this effect.
crack
I boycotted B-J for a while because I didn’t want to fund PJM through ad hits. I love the site but I’ll probably leave again because I really don’t want to fund PJM and JTP through my actions. It’s like how I boycott subway because I hate their ads.
Rick Taylor
@John Cole:
You mean you have to *pay* to watch him? O.O Wow.
Seriously, what is Pajamas Media thinking making Joe the Plumber a war correspondent? Do they want to be a joke? If I were a conservative, I’d be pissed with them for making it more difficult to take conservatives seriously.
demimondian
@crack: I recommend NoScript. You can selectively kill the PJM ads.
I imagine that if somebody with real haxx0r credz took it on, he or she could write a Greasemonkey script which would increment the view count, and then move the image off-screen. That would be illegal and fraudulent, though, so nobody should actually do it.
Rick Taylor
On a positive note, John, aren’t you happy you left the Republicans, so you’re not stuck defending defending conservatives from liberals using Palin and Joe to mock them?
Zuzu's Petals
@Rick Taylor:
Which is why I think it has fail written all over it.
Watch and mock the guy for free? Heck yeah. But folks are a little more selective about what they’re gonna spend money on…and JTP infotainment ain’t very high on the list.
Karen
To Kay #72
"He could have gotten certified and parlayed his new-found fame as a plumber into an actual plumbing business."
No, he couldn’t have. To work as an actual plumber, you have to have a license. That takes having the documented time as a registered apprentice & passing the test to get a Journeyman license. You actually have to know how to do it to pass those tests. Then you can have your own company & the insurance that’s required. JTP could be a handyman, maybe.
I know this because my husband is a 30 year plumber. We do have our own company.
ricky
@ Tattoosydney
They are a terrific export. Beats heck out of the BeeGees and Mel Gibson…oops, he’s recycling, not export.
Guy in Jersey
@demimondian: @demimondian:
Demimondian, do you practice at being a moron, or is it a real disability? I mean, someone gets something wrong, and you not only "correct" him with something wrong, but you follow it with an insult that could as a result describe you as well.
Zuzu's Petals
@Karen:
Criminey. You mean JTP had been doing this for 15 years and hadn’t even made journeyman?
Edit: according to this article, he didn’t even complete his apprencticeship.
DonnaInMichigan
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity".
–Martin Luther King
Fits JTP and Sarah Palin, to a tee.