Wurzelbacher touched on several different points during his speech, and many of them were surprising. He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort. “John McCain is no public servant,” he told the room, calling the 2008 Republican nominee a career politician.
I pointed out he’d just be plain old Sam Wurzelbacher of Ohio — Joe the Plumber wouldn’t exist – without McCain. His response was blunt. “I don’t owe him s—. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”
Wurzelbacher said, “McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”
Really? You think you might have been used to uncritically advance the agenda of the GOP? You think they didn’t really want your reporting skills when they sent you to Israel to make a fool out of yourself? You think there is a chance the tea partiers are also being used.
Miracles never cease.
russell
And, of course, that never goes both ways.
brantl
It does clear up one thing, though. Wurzelburger is now, officially, smarter than a sack of hammers; he’s gotten one thing right.
Short Bus Bully
Does this mean there might be hope for some Tea Baggers to see the light?
Probably the same light the Bob Dole Republicans are seeing no doubt. Just wish they would speak up about it.
El Cid
Somebody should give the poor man a purple heard band aid for his emotional wounds.
AB
Should start measuring irony on a log scale. McCain didn’t make Joe the Plumber alone; our most influential journalists think transparent gimmicks are Great Ideas that the rest of the country should hear about over and over and over again.
demo woman
Joe the Plumber’s ten minutes of fame ended with the debate. He just didn’t know it.
Svensker
The personal responsibility fu is strong with this one.
Dan Robinson
Most of these political celebrities are like other celebrities in that they are just narcissistic cocksuckers. We shouldn’t be surprised that there are people like Joe the Plumber out there. We shouldn’t be surprised that the media waves these people like a flag to sell advertising.
Mike S
He’s either lying or the Republican candidates are even more idiotic than we think.
MagicPanda
Joe the plumber manages to keep his finger on the pulse of America by becoming the posterchild for incoherent resentment and rage. Awesome.
John Quixote
Is our morans learning?
demkat620
And yet, no one in the GOP has asked themselves why Joe the Plumber schtick never caught on with people.
Terrifying that if the MSM gets their wish, these dopes will be back in charge in January. Terrifying.
mr. whipple
Face of middle Americans? What a pompous freaking dolt.
forked tongue
@demkat620:
Hey, was notJoe the notPlumber even mentioned in that “Game Change” book? Anyone know?
gnomedad
Does he have business cards that read:
S. J. Wurzelbacher
Face of Middle America
sparky
if the man had a brain, he would have realized there was no way he could compete
in the swimsuit competitionso he should have had an affair with her. that way, they’d both stay in the headlines.second place is a bitter fruit in these united states. especially when it’s in Ohio. in the winter.
Thlayli
@demkat620:
Well, to start with they didn’t notice it wasn’t catching on. A competent campaign would’ve spotted that in about a week. But McCain & Co heard the cheers of the base, decided they had a winner, and rode it all the way down the drain.
mr. whipple
@Thlayli:
I have a conservative friend, bless his heart, that thought JTP was just the greatest thing.
I still have trouble looking at him and not laughing when I realize he voted for Palin. He still thinks she’s ‘hot’.
Robin G.
Jesus, don’t post shit like this before noon. It’s too early in the day to start drinking.
Jean
“A few minutes with Joe the Plumber” (title) is all anyone could stand, I suspect. And McCain “screwed [his] life up”? How’s that personal responsibility thingy going for him?
ajr22
You think you might have been used to uncritically advance the agenda of the GOP? One could only hope the media will have a joe the plumber like realization and stop talking about Palin.
Max
Did anyone watch MTP this week? Biden was on fire and Rachel did a great job pushing back on Gregory’s nonsense.
He really is the worst host.
David
How did the Joe the Plumber® Officially-endorsed candidates do?
And what happened to the album he announced he was making?
Jean
@Max: No, do tell.
Ana Gama
Yeah, maybe the moran is learning:
Max
@Jean: Rachel came armed with so many facts that David was rendered mute when he kept trying to reframe the questions with his GOP talking points.
She pwned this episode. I’m sure highlights will be posted online.
Jean
@Max: I like David Gregory best when he’s mute.
Brick Oven Bob
He added, “I’d like Woody Allen’s movies except for that nervous little feller that’s always in ’em.”
Annie
“Explaining that his bar is pretty high…” Except, of course, for actually working for a living….Total. Ass.
Skepticat
Is total, complete, utter lack of self-awareness part of the narcissistic personality?
Tom Levenson
Yeah, this is funny. I am laughing here, and I agree with all the comments about personal knowledge and the locally small gravitational constant that must obtain where ever that shoe finally dropped.
But I have to confess a hint of sympathy here. I’ve only had a couple of chances to see the impact of celebrity more or less close at hand — I once traveled with Yo-Yo Ma for a week on a story, for example–and it is such a weird ride. Yo-Yo himself was a prince btw, very much the man his public persona would suggest. But he was never not the focus of attention, not for a second; there was never a moment when someone did not want to bask in the glow, or talk to him, or want something from him…me included, of course, given that I had sought him out to anchor a section of a book and an article.
Ma handled everything I saw coming at him with great grace…but by the time I met, now quite a while ago, he had had something like 30 years practice at being an international star.
No put yourself in JTP’s shoes. One minute you’re a kind of a jerky guy in the neighborhood, next, somebody you’ve never met has turned you into the single point of focus of dozens of enormous camera lenses and those unblinking red dots. They haul you up on stage and 30,000 people cheer at every other line that comes out of your mouth. The kind of folks that have always been on the far distant other side of your TV come up to you, shake your hand, ask your thoughts with seeming interest…
Tell me that doesn’t make you in some strict sense of the word, flat out crazy.
Hell — I once gave a lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College’s Nobel conference, a weekend science geekapalooza in small-town Minnesota. They filled the hockey rink — the rink!- with chairs. With the overflow seating — overflow! — maybe 6,000 people had come from all over the country to spend a couple of days listening to the lineup. That was my first, and so far only experience of speaking to a really big crowd, of speaking at a podium with those CEO giant video panels on either side and so on. I spoke early in the program, and so for the next two days, hundreds of strangers came up to me and said nice things. It was a huge rush — and that was nothing like, I mean nothing close to what Wurzlebacher experienced.
For me, and for most who drop into little ghosts of celebrity moments, that rush ends the moment you land back in your home city and it’s garbage night and time to empty the cat’s litterbox. But JTP lived this life for a lot larger and for quite a bit longer. Sure he’s a jerk; sure he’s so thoroughly unreflective that he’s taken a very long time to realize that he was the geek, in the technical sense of that term, and not the carny. Its hard to feel too many pangs of sympathy for such a man. But to channel a little Townes Van Zandt on this Sunday morning, spare a few for Lefty too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord. Delusional much?
My only objection to JTnotP, like with Palin, is that nobody (in the MSM) makes the connection between this buffoonery and the man who brought it to the national stage. McCain called this lying racist sack of crap “my hero! my role model!”
mellowjohn
watched MTP and couldn’t decide whom i wanted to smack more: david gregory, bobo (usually my go-to guy for smacking around), or that smug little shit aaron schock.
Zach
The amazing thing about the whole episode is that Obama was probably wholly aware of how much of a plant Joe was and didn’t really give a shit, recognizing that McCain hitching his entire campaign to conspiratorial “spread the wealth” nonsense would mean his certain doom. I assume that the word was out that Joe was in league with McCain at least a day before the last debate, given that McCain’s crew was orchestrating Joe’s appearances all over TV, his post-debate analysis, etc. The whole thing was so clumsy.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
“McCain was trying to use me. ”
Say it ain’t so, Joe.
growingdaisies
Know what’s encouraging? I read this post, and for a handful of seconds, I had to really try to remember who this Wurzelbacher guy was.
chopper
see, the fact that he himself bought that just goes to show how easily he was hoodwinked. if you’re willing to buy that you represent america just because you’re an idiot plumber, you deserve what you get.
russell
Yeah, and if you’re a narcissistic weirdo, a year later you say “Man, that went to my head! What an ass I was!”
russell
Sorry, that should be “if you’re not a narcissistic weirdo”…
Julia Grey
He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort.
And because she upstaged the shit out of him.
Mike G
“And you know what else? Drinking carbonated beverages doesn’t attract dozens of bikini-clad women like in the TV commercials. And the stripper at my local club? Only pretending to like me for my money”.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I think it’s the surest sign of long term Republican fail that any of them, including JTP, could figure that this loser moron guy without a clue or a pot, would be the “face of Middle Americans.”
If this hapless idiot is the the face of America, then the GOP should be ashamed of itself and should just disband, because they have tried to be in charge of what America is for a long time …. and Joe is the poster boy? Wow, thanks GOP!
The GOP has convinced itself and for a while, us, that America is about YoungEarthers and people who read mosly gun magazines, for about 40 years now. It isn’t, and it’s time we stopped acting like we were afraid of them. They are cartoon figures.
Heresiarch
“I don’t owe him s—. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”
“Yeah! Fuck you, Old Man McCain! Fuck you for making me an inexplicably influential figure on the right! Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Silver
Of course Joe the Plumber is the face of Middle America.
Fat, stupid, lazy, white, ignorant, and delusional. Maybe a little less Jesus humping than normal, perhaps?
Gozer
He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort.
Wait, wait, wait…shouldn’t he have disliked Palin before this since she was presumably in on the original campaign?
licensed to kill time
__
Jeez, it took The Plumber long enough to snake that drain.
FlipYrWhig
“Joe” strikes me as the quintessential half-assed contractor of the kind whose work utterly exasperates Mike Holmes of HGTV phenomenon “Holmes on Homes.”
El Cid
He’s against the Innarests and for the little man!
kay
@licensed to kill time:
He’s still an egomaniac, and he’s still deluded.
He is not the face of middle America. As I recall, he’s an unlicensed plumber who doesn’t work a whole lot, and had some theoretical point to make about his theoretical small business. He was wrong even on the specifics of that.
I got news for him. Millions of people didn’t appoint him as their spokesperson. The McCain Campaign did. He shouldn’t confuse those two things.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
I agree. He’s also pretty damn slow on the uptake – “It was a ploy” ? well, DUH.
Liberty60
@mellowjohn:
You know, the GOP seems to think they are on to something with their theory that we vote for the guys who we want to have a beer with.
Then why are GOP congresscritters so uniformly smarmy and the sort we would like to – as Bill Maher said last night- have a beer with, then smash the bottle over their head?
In case anyone didn’t see Maher last night, he was on fire.
kay
@licensed to kill time:
I just don’t think most people are “like” an unemployed unlicensed plumber. I live in Ohio and I actually wondered a little on how he was getting paid when he took, what? Two years off? These are the boring things I wonder about, because I’m actually self-employed.
He won’t get to 250k taxable income so Obama can tax him wandering around at Town Hall events! What about his dream of becoming a licensed plumbing contractor?
Maybe he’s talking about his physical appearance?
Still, even there.
Quiddity
Actually, Wurzelbacher had a great chance offered to him, courtesy of the Republicans and conservatives. Problem was, he didn’t have the ability or interest. (BTW, not many of us could easily catapult into something like, say, being a frequent guest on a political chat show or a writer of a decent weekly column.)
I didn’t care for the guy one way or the other. He always seemed dull and low-energy; it was other peoples’ heralding him that kept his name in the news, not anything he was doing.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Kay, I think the point with Joe W. is that he thinks Middle Americans are just like him – White, entitled to their Rights and just all around more Real than those Other people.
At this point he’s just riding the gravy train for as long as it’ll let him stay on. I guess that’s easier than an actual job. I just find it astounding that he didn’t cotton on to being “used” for cynical political points oh, about two years ago.
As far as his physical appearance I seem to recall he thinks he’s pretty hot. Remember when he announced he was horny to a whole roomful of conservatives?
kay
@licensed to kill time:
Personally, I think a lot of “middle America” are strivers.
We had an Obama campaign “intern” from out of state stay with us for a little while. She had plans and goals and shit.
“I was in Teach for America, and I’m going to do this for 4 months, and then I’m going to do the nursing boards”. We never saw her. She worked 16 hours a day. If she wanted a plumbing license, I would bet she would actually get one, in addition to her political activities.
He’s spent two years bitching about paying taxes on income he’s never in his life earned. I just don’t think this is how the vast majority of Americans see themselves. He’s essentially a full-time complainer. he could be a master plumber by now.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Well apparently, in Wurzlebacher’s mind the fact that he’s not a master plumber by now is McCain’s fault because he totally “screwed up his life”. He’d totally be working on that license otherwise.
I really despise McCain for elevating this person as well as Sarah Palin into the limelight. We would never have heard of either one of them if it wasn’t for McCain’s pathetic, desperate and cynical moves to win what he thought was rightfully his by any means necessary and damn the cost.
sukabi
(not) Joe the (not) plumber finally reached the conclusion that McCain was just using him???
wow, that only took 9 months or so… but more than likely, the money men that’re “managing” him have decided to change directions and are in full “bagger embrace” mode and are trying to squeeze one last drop out of the dumb dick.
when Wurzelbacher’s gravy train dries up and he has to finally go back to work he’ll be claiming some injury and start sucking off the gov tit again.
Rick Taylor
For me, one of the surrealistic moments of the 2008 campaign was when McCain actually started using Joe the Plumber as an official prop for his campaign.
mclaren
Just wait, brother, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I look at Joe Wurzelbacher and think…future Senator.
asiangrrlMN
@Tom Levenson: This is a very thoughtful response, but all I could focus in on was that you got to hang with Yo-Yo Ma. He is, indeed, the man.
I disagree with your premise to a certain extent. I think the inherent personality of a person has much to do with how s/he reacts to becoming a star. Some, like Ma, are naturally diffident and humble. Some, like Joe-the-not-Plumber are naturally dicks and assholes. He is also phenomenonally ungrateful. He was a question to an answer on Jeopardy for X’s sake! He is like many Americans in that he thinks that he’s owed…whatever. He has no business being a household name, and yet, he thinks it’s his due.
If I had been in his position, I would be seriously amused and a bit disdainful over all the who-ha. And I would be tempted to just start making shit up to mess with the media. That’s my nature.
Admiral_Komack
Sam Wurzelbacher is a whiny ass bitch.
Admiral_Komack
“He’s spent two years bitching about paying taxes on income he’s never in his life earned. I just don’t think this is how the vast majority of Americans see themselves. He’s essentially a full-time complainer. he could be a master plumber by now.”
-Master plumber?
He’s a master bator.
A colossal jerk-off.
maody
(not) Joe the (not) plumber screwed his own pooch. oh wait, will Tunch & friends kick me for saying that?
Tom Levenson
@asiangrrlMN:
One of the best hobbies to pursue, IMHO.
bjacques
He’s the plumber’s crack of Middle Americans. I wish him Godspeed on his luge run to well-earned obscurity.