Meet Joe the Plumber and Caribou Barbie, ladies and germs.
Each week, their hilarious misadventures tickle the funny bone of a nation. Watch their ZANY, madcap antics, a virtual LAFF RIOT of thrills, chills, spills and dollar bills.
Just think of our past episodes:
Joe the Plumber "˜writes- a book in only a few days! Now, he-s Joe the Author!
Caribou Barbie-s fellow mother at the shotgun wedding-to-be is arrested for selling Oxycontin* (* recommended by Rush Limbaugh!).
Caribou Barbie and hubby buy silk boxer shorts! (Just by the by, how come nobody-s followed up on the fact that you can-t donate used undergarments or socks? I doubt that those were thrown away, and imagine that the Palins got to KEEP that stuff. The rest was donated, allegedly, by the RNC "” who paid for the kewl togs for the Alaskan hogs "” to "˜charity- after the election. But I betcha there-s a lot of lingerie and silk boxers that remained in Alaska.)
And now, Caribou Barbie stars in even more side-splittin- gosh-darned hilarious zany madcap antic shenanigans!
And Joe the Plumber goes to Israel as a WAR CORRESPONDENT!
Honestly, are we talking about real people here, or is this an episode of The Simpsons? (One guess who plays Homer.)
Worse, what does it say that so many are befuddled by this cult of mediocrity? That any job can be done by any telegenic moron?
His Persiflage, Plumber Joe
It sometimes seems as though the very concept of competence is under assault by a well-oiled Media Machine.
Consider this bit of idiocy from Roger Simon, founder of Pajamas Media, and a novelist and screenwriter in his actual day job:
January 7th, 2009 4:27 pm Joe the Plumber: Mr. Smith Goes to Jerusalem for Pajamas TV
By now many of you have heard that Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is leaving for Israel tomorrow to be a war correspondent for Pajamas TV. This has created quite a brouhaha in the media - cable television, newspapers, wire services, etc. Everyone from CNN to gawker.com has something to say about Joe heading for the Middle East. He will appear on Fox and Friends tomorrow morning before his departure.
To be honest, some (maybe much) of this reportage is pretty snotty. Nora O'Donnell of MSNBC - herself a MA in international relations, lahdeedah - fairly frothed at the mouth at the prospect of the unqualified Joe having the temerity to report news in a foreign land. Those hipoisie over at Gawker weren't too charitable either.
Evidently, a lot of people are annoyed that Joe's fifteen Warhol minutes aren't quite over yet. Or perhaps they're threatened that a common man can be a reporter simply by asking common sense questions - no Columbia J-school degree required. (Hemingway didn't have one. He didn't even go to college, as I recall.) But the larger question is the role of expertise in general. Of course, experts are valuable, but so are those who ask the seemingly too obvious questions of the supposedly uninformed - dumb questions that can end up having more value for the public than all the experts combined. Sometimes, anyway"¦.
Now, consider what Simon posits as a serious argument in favor of Joe-s journalistic credentials:
Hemingway didn-t have a college degree.
Joe the War Correspondent doesn-t have a college degree.
Therefore: Joe the War Correspondent = Hemingway.
I-m not being "cute" here: this is the actual dumbass argument offered. So, let-s look at Hemingway-s writing education, just to make sure that he-s as clueless and inexperienced as Joe the Plumb-bob. From my old editor at The Kansas City Star, Steve Paul:
Ernest Miller Hemingway was 18 years old when he walked into the newsroom of The Kansas City Star and began his writing career. Straight out of high school in Oak Park, Ill., Hemingway pounded the streets as a cub reporter at the newspaper for six and a half months, from Oct. 17, 1917 to April 30, 1918. From here, with World War I in progress, he joined the Red Cross ambulance service, headed for the front in Italy, was seriously wounded, fell in and out of love and willed himself into becoming a literary giant"¦.
Hemingway was "apprenticed" as a cub reporter, which is how newspapers used to train journalists. The question is one of "profession" and "professionalism":
The scholars would ask for the [Kansas City Star] library-s clippings on Hemingway and C.G. "Pete" Wellington, the assistant city editor of The Star in 1917. Hemingway credited Wellington with changing his verbose high school writing style into clear, provocative English. The scholars also requested "The Star Copy Style" sheet, a single, galley-sized page, which contained the 110 rules governing Star prose. Hemingway later would recall the sheet as something "they gave you to study when you went to work and after that you were just as responsible for having learned it as after you-ve had the articles of war read to you."
Hemingway would always remember the style sheet and its core admonition: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."
"Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing," Hemingway said in 1940. "I-ve never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides with them."
The "Copy Style" sheet was a bible, containing eminently practical rules.
I commend to you the "Copy Style" sheet excerpt on the site, too. But my point is this: Hemingway was trained in a tough trade by seasoned veterans. He was shown how to write, and apprenticed in his profession.
Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation. For instance, in quoting a child, do not let him say "Inadvertently, I picked up the stone and threw it." [Style Sheet]
Hemingway was "one of those who make great demands on themselves," to quote Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who neatly summarized Simon-s argument and its absurdity very precisely in 1930:
When one speaks of "select minorities" [i.e. "the media elite"] it is usual for the evil-minded to twist the sense of this expression, pretending to be unaware that the select man is not the petulant person who thinks himself superior to the rest, but the man who demands more of himself than the rest, even though he may not fulfil in his person those higher exigencies.
For there is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.
This reminds me that orthodox Buddhism is composed of two distinct religions: one, more rigorous and difficult, the other easier and more trivial: the Mahayana- "great vehicle" or "great path"- and the Hinayana- "lesser vehicle" or "lesser path."
The decisive matter is whether we attach our life to one or the other vehicle, to a maximum or a minimum of demands upon ourselves.
The division of society into masses and select minorities is, then, not a division into social classes, but into classes of men, and cannot coincide with the hierarchic separation of "upper" and "lower" classes. [Revolt of the Masses, 1930]
Hemingway clearly fell into one class. Joe the Plumber falls into well, an obvious class, as well.
This is the absurdist concept that education, training, experience "” "competence""“ don-t matter. It is more than a dumbass putdown of journalism "” which, while it may have its faults, and too-frequent gaffes is far preferable to the howling chaos that would exist without it "” but is, in fact, the conscious and deceptive use of what I can only term a very evil and malevolent lie: that anyone can do any job, you know, like president, or war correspondent. See? Joe the Plumber is going to show up them fancy pants journalistic city slickers.
Yee haw.
Except that Simon isn-t a stupid man. Misguided? Perhaps, but not a moron, prima fascie. Novel writing and screenwriting require more than a little sheer skill in the difficult discipline of writing. But Simon is suggesting here "” by his own logick "” that Joe the Novelist and Joe the Screenwriter would be at least as good as Simon himself on Joe-s first shot out of the box.
It-s worse than absurd or ridiculous "” it is a conscious, intentional lie.
What kind of person pushes the meme that any dumbass can do any job?
This isn-t a news story. It-s an episode of South Park.
Here-s the regard that Simon holds for those in that profession Hemingway apprentice
And remember Simon-s bray:
Evidently, a lot of people are annoyed that Joe's fifteen Warhol minutes aren't quite over yet. Or perhaps they're threatened that a common man can be a reporter simply by asking common sense questions "¦
Yeah. Joe the Plumb-bob is Hemingway. Gotcha.
But, you see, old Roger has another reason for pumping up Joe-s notoriety (it was a nice publicity stunt for grabbing headlines, kind of like having porn star Mary Carey run for governor during the bizarro recall-Gropenator election in California a few years back. She wanted attention, and she got it.)
Roger Simon-s hired Joe as his centerpiece for their big rollout of Pajamas TV at the CPAC Convention in February:
Isn-t that a fine kettle of weasels?
Did you wonder if Malkin is in cahoots? Wonder no more. Here-s Her Dumbassery on Joe the War Correspondent:
Joe the Plumber heads to Israel
By Michelle Malkin
- January 7, 2009 12:52 PM
Joe The Plumber will cover the Gaza conflict for PJTV. He'll be there for 10 days. Stay safe, Joe! [Quoting the International Herald Tribune, the "Global edition of the New York Times" (its overseas edition), but Malkin doesn't want to deign to credit the news organization she bashes on a continual and hysterical basis, so she steals the quote and credits
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