TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- Joe the Plumber
Pages (6): « 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 »

holy shit the media is destroying this guy. all he did was ask a question. this should really scare people.

too bad the poor bastard isn't an immigrant worker or a minority. he'd have half a chance but he's f**ked now. really sad.

again, all he did was ask a question, f**k

So the guy lied about his income?

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton So the guy lied about his income?

no. he said he wanted to buy a plumbing company or start one.

here's the full exchange unedited.

It's pretty sad that the Republicans are starting to pin their hopes on this guy. If nothing else it shows just how desperate and bereft of ideas they are at the moment (as if the ACORN / Ayers narrative wasn't enough of a clue).

In addition to the article that josh posted, this MSNBC article is pretty enlightening:

quote:

Wurzelbacher also acknowledged that he had no specific plans for buying Newell�s business, saying he and Newell had simply talked about the idea from time to time. He might have difficulty making the purchase: Court records from his divorce show that Wurzelbacher made $40,000 in 2006. Even if he did buy Newell Plumbing and Heating, Obama�s tax plan wouldn�t affect him. While Wurzelbacher told Obama that he would be taxed at a higher rate because the company grossed more than $250,000 a year, Ohio business records show the company�s estimated total annual revenue as only $100,000. Actual taxable income would be even less than that.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27221645/

Put simply, this guy is either a liar and a shill (the fact that he's a registered Republican and appears quite adept at parrotting Republican talking-points would seem to bear this out) or he is simply self-aggrandising and delusional. To be honest, I'm more inclined to the latter.

The delusion concerning wealth mobility in America is a common one: something like 40% of Americans believe that they will one day be in the top 1% of income-earners. This is a myth (happily peddled by the Republicans, of course) which belies the fact that across all countries there is an inverse correlation between wealth inequality and wealth mobility (link) and there is less social mobility in the US than in the UK and the "socialised" Scandinavian countries (link). I think this is a myth that our friend Joe, based on the response he gave in an interview with Katie Couric, has bought into hook, line and sinker:

quote:

COURIC: Well, he supposedly will raise taxes only on people who make over $250,000 a year. Would you be in that category? WURZELBACHER: Not right now at presently, but, you know, question, so he's going to do that now for people who make $250,000 a year. When's he going to decide that $100,000 is too much, you know? I mean, you're on a slippery slope here. You vote on somebody who decides that $250,000 and you're rich? And $100,000 and you're rich? I mean, where does it end? You know, that's - people got to ask that question.

If it is true that he is only making $40,000 a year into his 40s, then the odds of him ever making $250,000 a year are surely vanishingly slim. He is voting directly against his best interests now based on the false hope that he will one day make it into the top tax-bracket. He's not living the American Dream, he's living an American day-dream.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly the way that the issue of taxation has been so successfully framed by the Republicans in recent history. The Democrats, so the story goes, like to egregiously "tax and spend" the income of "hard-working Americans" and are actively engaged in the process of "wealth redistribution". This is dog-whistle politics at its finest: the implication is that you are a hard worker entitled to the fruits of your labour, whereas they are nothing but lazy welfare-bums, happy to leech off the hard-work of others. This is such a paranoid, cynical world-view, so completely divorced from the reality of the root causes of poverty that it barely merits redressing. However, it is a persistent myth, and one that has been quite effective in convincing poor, white people to vote against their direct interests.

As insiduously effective as this GOP characterisation of Democratic tax policy has been, I don't think that Joe - or any other working-class Americans who have bought into this myth - can be completely exempt from responsibility for their gullibility. This is a bit of a tangent, but there has been a series of interesting posts on this Christian blog recently about why people so credibly buy into misinformation:

quote:

I used to believe that maybe some people were that stupid. They were acting that stupid, so I went along. I believed that the people I was sending that dossier to were merely innocent dupes. But in truth they were neither innocent nor dupes. The category of innocent dupe does not apply here. No one could be honestly misled by such a story. The only way to have been misled by it is dishonestly -- which is to say deliberately, willingly and willfully. They are claiming to believe a foolish thing, but they are not guilty of foolishness. They are guilty of malice. They are just plain guilty. [...] This story, as with the many others like it, is spread maliciously. The people spreading it are not fools. They are not suffering from a mental defect, but from a moral one. They have chosen to bear false witness, and they do so knowingly.

The original post didn't have anything to do with this issue, but I think the maxim is a universal one: people do not accept and propogate such misinformation so readily unless they have an underlying desire to do so. When Obama gives Joe a nuanced answer about increasing the tax burden on those businesses that can most afford it in order to give breaks to small business just starting out (which would include Joe's putative business), it ends up in Joe's mind as evidence of "socialism" and "wealth distribution" within the space of a couple of days (compare this to this). That isn't innocent stupidity, that's malicious ignorance.

This of course begs the question as to why someone would so willingly buy into such misinformation. The blog I mentioned before uses the term "Melon morality" to describe the phenomenon where people invent fictitious monsters to compare themselves down to, in order to aggrandise their own moral disposition:

quote:

Melon was the character played by Rodney Dangerfield in the movie Back to School, the wealthy owner of a chain of "Tall & Fat" clothing stores whose motto was "If you want to look thin, you hang out with fat people." That approach -- finding people we can compare-down to -- might make us feel a little better about ourselves, but it doesn't change who or what we really are. The Thornton Melon approach might make us look thin, but it won't help us become so. Melon morality is never anything more than an optical illusion. This comparing-down is ultimately corrosive because it bases our sense of morality in pride rather than in love -- in the cardinal vice instead of the cardinal virtue. And to fuel that pride, we end up looking for ever-more extreme and exotically awful people to compare ourselves favorably against, people whose freakish cruelty makes our own mediocrity show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off.

By any sense of the word, the life that Joe leads is a mediocre one. If he has bought into the myth that hard-work necessarily translates into wealth, then it would be understandable if he suffers agonising moments in which he questions his self-worth. The simplest and easiest way to allay these doubts is to compare himself down to a ficticious cabal of welfare cheats, who must only be poor because they don't share his work-ethic (which is highlighted in an interview that he gave - which I now cannot find for the life of me - in which he questioned why his wealth should be redistributed to those who don't work as hard as he does).

This need to make a virtue of modest acheivements facilitates a self-aggrandising "optical illusion", where one's own otherwise unremarkable virtues are contrasted with the virtues of a demographic that doesn't actually exist. Poor whites thus vote against their interests, because they have a visceral need to believe that they are not like those poor people, who are content to just mooch off the hard-work of others. People like Joe therefore willingly refuse to recognise the realities of their socio-economic status, because by doing so they would have to necessarily conflate themselves with the people they have invented in order to make themselves look more virtuous.

Given all this, when Obama becomes president and mails Joe that tax credit to get his business off the ground, I hope that he has enough integrity to mail it back, lest he participate in this insidious process of wealth-distribution. Somehow, though, I can't see that happening.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka Thanks for the valuable insight! Say hi to Vick for me, we've missed him!

Vick the Carpenter?

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo holy shit the media is destroying this guy. all he did was ask a question. this should really scare people. too bad the poor bastard isn't an immigrant worker or a minority. he'd have half a chance but he's f**ked now. really sad. again, all he did was ask a question, f**k

Yeah, THIS is what should "REALLY" scare people, right Q. LOL

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby Yeah, THIS is what should "REALLY" scare people, right Q. LOL

isn't that what the media is so good at, the personal destruction of people? again, all he did was ask a question.

lets say you had the courage enough to look at this from....awww f**k it nevermind

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby Vick the Carpenter?

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade It's pretty sad that the Republicans are starting to pin their hopes on this guy. If nothing else it shows just how desperate and bereft of ideas they are at the moment (as if the ACORN / Ayers narrative wasn't enough of a clue). In addition to the article that josh posted, this MSNBC article is pretty enlightening: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27221645/ Put simply, this guy is either a liar and a shill (the fact that he's a registered Republican and appears quite adept at parrotting Republican talking-points would seem to bear this out) or he is simply self-aggrandising and delusional. To be honest, I'm more inclined to the latter. The delusion concerning wealth mobility in America is a common one: something like 40% of Americans believe that they will one day be in the top 1% of income-earners. This is a myth (happily peddled by the Republicans, of course) which belies the fact that across all countries there is an inverse correlation between wealth inequality and wealth mobility (link) and there is less social mobility in the US than in the UK and the "socialised" Scandinavian countries (link). I think this is a myth that our friend Joe, based on the response he gave in an interview with Katie Couric, has bought into hook, line and sinker: If it is true that he is only making $40,000 a year into his 40s, then the odds of him ever making $250,000 a year are surely vanishingly slim. He is voting directly against his best interests now based on the false hope that he will one day make it into the top tax-bracket. He's not living the American Dream, he's living an American day-dream. Part of the problem is undoubtedly the way that the issue of taxation has been so successfully framed by the Republicans in recent history. The Democrats, so the story goes, like to egregiously "tax and spend" the income of "hard-working Americans" and are actively engaged in the process of "wealth redistribution". This is dog-whistle politics at its finest: the implication is that you are a hard worker entitled to the fruits of your labour, whereas they are nothing but lazy welfare-bums, happy to leech off the hard-work of others. This is such a paranoid, cynical world-view, so completely divorced from the reality of the root causes of poverty that it barely merits redressing. However, it is a persistent myth, and one that has been quite effective in convincing poor, white people to vote against their direct interests. As insiduously effective as this GOP characterisation of Democratic tax policy has been, I don't think that Joe - or any other working-class Americans who have bought into this myth - can be completely exempt from responsibility for their gullibility. This is a bit of a tangent, but there has been a series of interesting posts on this Christian blog recently about why people so credibly buy into misinformation: The original post didn't have anything to do with this issue, but I think the maxim is a universal one: people do not accept and propogate such misinformation so readily unless they have an underlying desire to do so. When Obama gives Joe a nuanced answer about increasing the tax burden on those businesses that can most afford it in order to give breaks to small business just starting out (which would include Joe's putative business), it ends up in Joe's mind as evidence of "socialism" and "wealth distribution" within the space of a couple of days (compare this to this). That isn't innocent stupidity, that's malicious ignorance. This of course begs the question as to why someone would so willingly buy into such misinformation. The blog I mentioned before uses the term "Melon morality" to describe the phenomenon where people invent fictitious monsters to compare themselves down to, in order to aggrandise their own moral disposition: By any sense of the word, the life that Joe leads is a mediocre one. If he has bought into the myth that hard-work necessarily translates into wealth, then it would be understandable if he suffers agonising moments in which he questions his self-worth. The simplest and easiest way to allay these doubts is to compare himself down to a ficticious cabal of welfare cheats, who must only be poor because they don't share his work-ethic (which is highlighted in an interview that he gave - which I now cannot find for the life of me - in which he questioned why his wealth should be redistributed to those who don't work as hard as he does). This need to make a virtue of modest acheivements facilitates a self-aggrandising "optical illusion", where one's own otherwise unremarkable virtues are contrasted with the virtues of a demographic that doesn't actually exist. Poor whites thus vote against their interests, because they have a visceral need to believe that they are not like those poor people, who are content to just mooch off the hard-work of others. People like Joe therefore willingly refuse to recognise the realities of their socio-economic status, because by doing so they would have to necessarily conflate themselves with the people they have invented in order to make themselves look more virtuous. Given all this, when Obama becomes president and mails Joe that tax credit to get his business off the ground, I hope that he has enough integrity to mail it back, lest he participate in this insidious process of wealth-distribution. Somehow, though, I can't see that happening.

I'm actually with Q on this one. All that ^^^ and the media's obsession with this is in no way good. I had a feeling it was headed this way. If it keeps up this is going to come back to the media and it is not going to be pretty. I don't mean the left media, I mean all media, even if Fox tried to spin it as the "left" media's problem then they would be at fault as well. The whole thing needs to be dropped, right now, and thats not going to happen.

The point that people are missing here is the only reason this clown asked the question is because he doesn't make anywhere near $250K right now. Anyone who makes that kind of money is aware of tax shelters that will soften the blow of any increase. This is a non-issue to me even though McCain is all over it. It's not like Obama is proposing a 75% tax on income over $250K, it is a small increase and the wealthy in this country that have to pay it shouldn't bitch too much, after all they did just get 8 years of tax breaks from Bush.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo holy shit the media is destroying this guy. all he did was ask a question. this should really scare people. too bad the poor bastard isn't an immigrant worker or a minority. he'd have half a chance but he's f**ked now. really sad. again, all he did was ask a question, f**k

All he did was ask a question, and then McCain dragged him front and center into the campaign. In researching whether McCain's attacks are valid, people get dirt on Joe - he really only has McCain to thank for the increased spotlight.

quote:

Originally posted by XaNaX The point that people are missing here is the only reason this clown asked the question is because he doesn't make anywhere near $250K right now. Anyone who makes that kind of money is aware of tax shelters that will soften the blow of any increase.

Not necessarily true by any means. A bit presumptuous of you if anything. So goes the assumption that the rich are evil and don't pay their "fair share"...Further, fwiw, Joe Plumber stated how much money he thought he'd be making if he were to purchase the business. I think he said $260-280K...right in the wheelhouse. I love that he's a "clown" in your book for whatever reason. "Hey Joe the Clown! You're sitting on the edge of the people I'm going to screw, but your opinion is meaningless! You're just a dumb plumber!"

quote:

It's not like Obama is proposing a 75% tax on income over $250K, it is a small increase and the wealthy in this country that have to pay it shouldn't bitch too much, after all they did just get 8 years of tax breaks from Bush.

And again, so goes the slippery slope argument. "It's just a little bit...you can afford it...come on, spread the wealth around a bit...do it for the good of your COMMON man!

You make the assumption that because someone makes more than you that hey have so much more spare cash laying around or that they have so much ease meeting their obligations...that you should be able to lay claim to ANY amount of their wealth, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, in the name of the common good. That it is the government's RIGHT to confiscate someone else's wealth because the government is somehow the ultimate arbiter of what is "FAIR" and should be able to redistribute wealth at will. Since you cannot legally steal from the so-called rich, you hide behind the government to legitimize it.

quote:

Originally posted by XaNaX The point that people are missing here is the only reason this clown asked the question is because he doesn't make anywhere near $250K right now. Anyone who makes that kind of money is aware of tax shelters that will soften the blow of any increase. This is a non-issue to me even though McCain is all over it. It's not like Obama is proposing a 75% tax on income over $250K, it is a small increase and the wealthy in this country that have to pay it shouldn't bitch too much, after all they did just get 8 years of tax breaks from Bush.

that's how i make my living, although the tax shelter business was almost entirely shut down by the IRS. Rich people avoid paying taxes by designing compensation packages with equity (15% tax), deferring compensation until they retire, taking a profits interest in a partnership (15% tax), receiving perc (company pays insurance), and investing in real estate or other businesses that are economically profitable but show tax loses (taking advantage of accelerated depreciation, deduction of financing expense, etc...).

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka Not necessarily true by any means. A bit presumptuous of you if anything. So goes the assumption that the rich are evil and don't pay their "fair share"...Further, fwiw, Joe Plumber stated how much money he thought he'd be making if he were to purchase the business. I think he said $260-280K...right in the wheelhouse. I love that he's a "clown" in your book for whatever reason. "Hey Joe the Clown! You're sitting on the edge of the people I'm going to screw, but your opinion is meaningless! You're just a dumb plumber!" And again, so goes the slippery slope argument. "It's just a little bit...you can afford it...come on, spread the wealth around a bit...do it for the good of your COMMON man! You make the assumption that because someone makes more than you that hey have so much more spare cash laying around or that they have so much ease meeting their obligations...that you should be able to lay claim to ANY amount of their wealth, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, in the name of the common good. That it is the government's RIGHT to confiscate someone else's wealth because the government is somehow the ultimate arbiter of what is "FAIR" and should be able to redistribute wealth at will. Since you cannot legally steal from the so-called rich, you hide behind the government to legitimize it.

How is this not socialism??

We can probably start to put this to bed:

quote:

As ThinkProgress and many others noted yesterday, the premise of Joe �the Plumber� Wurzelbacher�s complaints about Barack Obama�s tax plan was ill-informed. Contrary to Wurzelbacher�s claims, �neither his personal taxes nor those of the business where he works are likely to rise if Mr. Obama�s tax plan were to go into effect.� As CBS News reported, even �Joe The Plumber� acknowledges this fact now: So today, Joe, who said he makes much less than $250,000, reluctantly admitted Obama would lower his taxes. �I would, if you believe him, I would be receiving his tax cuts,� Wurzelbacher said. Watch it: Bloomberg reports that �one other problem in making Wurzelbacher a symbol of the overtaxed� is that � even if he did earn an adjusted gross income of $280,000 � �he would pay just $773 more in taxes under Obama�s plan than McCain�s.� That amount would hardly deal a crippling blow to his potential small business. Last night, Sarah Palin said she didn�t want to talk about Wurzelbacher. �I begged our speechwriters, �Don�t make me say Joe the Plumber, please, in any speeches,� she said. After failing to properly vet Wurzelbacher�s situation, the McCain campaign is apparently now throwing him overboard and moving on. The campaign is holding a conference call today with Russ Deker, an individual the McCain camp is calling �a Missouri �Joe the Plumber.��

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/17...mber-obama-cut/

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade We can probably start to put this to bed: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/17...mber-obama-cut/

^ Hardly. This is just another example of the McCain campaign's poor performance and failure to fully vet the people that matter before they shine the spotlight. Lets just hope Joe continues to fade away quietly and avoid a bursting bubble that wouldn't be good for anyone. Thankfully he was able to take the media onslaught with some manner of grace, kudos to him for that.

EDIT:

quote:

But under the glare of the ensuing media spotlight, reporters found that Mr. Wurzelbacher did not actually have a plumbing license, and that he actually owed some back taxes. Mr. McCain leapt to his defense here Friday in a rally at Florida International University � and made another leap by suggesting that the Obama campaign was somehow maligning the plumber whose vote Mr. Obama has sought at a campaign stop in Ohio. �The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe,� Mr. McCain said. �People are digging through his personal life, and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn�t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn�t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.� http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/u...ml?ref=politics

-sigh-

I don't give a shit about Joe the Plumber--again it's the philosophy involved and the slippery slope that Obama is pushing.

Don't worry Josh, you too will have a job and a family to support some day.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 ^ Hardly. This is just another example of the McCain campaign's poor performance and failure to fully vet the people that matter before they shine the spotlight. Lets just hope Joe continues to fade away quietly and avoid a bursting bubble that wouldn't be good for anyone. Thankfully he was able to take the media onslaught with some manner of grace, kudos to him for that. EDIT: -sigh-

He also didnt ask to be the center of the debate which McCain had no problem in doing so hence calling for the scrutiny.

If the McCain camp would have not even mentioned this none of this would have even been relevant.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka I don't give a shit about Joe the Plumber--again it's the philosophy involved and the slippery slope that Obama is pushing. Don't worry Josh, you too will have a job and a family to support some day.

Oh bullshit, as if I'm too naive to understand and wouldn't feel the way I do now should my situation be different. I get the philosophy and I agree with the methods.

Regardless, as Occrider put it

quote:

Originally posted by occrider What draws me about Obama is that he his economic team is comprised of some extremely smart advisers. He's attracted Warren Buffet, Robert Rubin, however, more importantly he's attracted Volker (who else is better during this time of scareflation???) and former bush administration officials such as Paul O'Neill and William Donaldson. Has McCain been "crossing the party line" in this respect? http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=485849

In the end, if its good enough for those guys, its good enough for me. Can't possibly be any worse than the past 8 years. (That was a cherry just for you.)

quote:

Originally posted by xKaoSx He also didnt ask to be the center of the debate which McCain had no problem in doing so hence calling for the scrutiny. If the McCain camp would have not even mentioned this none of this would have even been relevant.

yeah, it's painfully obvious you think the "relevancy" of Obama's answer to Joe's question is directly proportional how many times its mentioned. so not mention it at all and everything will be fine is your defence? tell me something thats not so obvious

more to the point though...my God you people never cease to amaze me.

how many times have politicians invoked people they've met on the campaign trail in a stump speech or debate of some sort? people like this are invoked because of their common connection with not only the electorate at large but whatever percieved connection they have to that particular candidate's viewpoint. how is this guy any different? i'll tell you why...

this time the person who was invoked revealed something very telling about Obama, now he's targeted like a public official instead of who he really is or represents, the electorate.

McCain brought up this guy because of what it revealed about your candidate, plain and simple. if anything is telling now it's how people like you tolerate, even condone, the personal destuction of people for what they believe in or what they expect out of the people THEY want working for THEM.

if you can't step out of the f**king box and see how f**ked up that is then you are what's wrong with this country not guys like Joe the Plumber or even Obama for that matter

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r How is this not socialism??

oh, for crying out loud

"socialism" is the ownership of private property by the workers that previously worked that property. basically it means those that were employed by the business now have a real input into the running and operation of that business.

socialism has nothing to do with income taxation.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade It's pretty sad that the Republicans are starting to pin their hopes on this guy. If nothing else it shows just how desperate and bereft of ideas they are at the moment (as if the ACORN / Ayers narrative wasn't enough of a clue). In addition to the article that josh posted, this MSNBC article is pretty enlightening: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27221645/ Put simply, this guy is either a liar and a shill (the fact that he's a registered Republican and appears quite adept at parrotting Republican talking-points would seem to bear this out) or he is simply self-aggrandising and delusional. To be honest, I'm more inclined to the latter. The delusion concerning wealth mobility in America is a common one: something like 40% of Americans believe that they will one day be in the top 1% of income-earners. This is a myth (happily peddled by the Republicans, of course) which belies the fact that across all countries there is an inverse correlation between wealth inequality and wealth mobility (link) and there is less social mobility in the US than in the UK and the "socialised" Scandinavian countries (link). I think this is a myth that our friend Joe, based on the response he gave in an interview with Katie Couric, has bought into hook, line and sinker: If it is true that he is only making $40,000 a year into his 40s, then the odds of him ever making $250,000 a year are surely vanishingly slim. He is voting directly against his best interests now based on the false hope that he will one day make it into the top tax-bracket. He's not living the American Dream, he's living an American day-dream. Part of the problem is undoubtedly the way that the issue of taxation has been so successfully framed by the Republicans in recent history. The Democrats, so the story goes, like to egregiously "tax and spend" the income of "hard-working Americans" and are actively engaged in the process of "wealth redistribution". This is dog-whistle politics at its finest: the implication is that you are a hard worker entitled to the fruits of your labour, whereas they are nothing but lazy welfare-bums, happy to leech off the hard-work of others. This is such a paranoid, cynical world-view, so completely divorced from the reality of the root causes of poverty that it barely merits redressing. However, it is a persistent myth, and one that has been quite effective in convincing poor, white people to vote against their direct interests. As insiduously effective as this GOP characterisation of Democratic tax policy has been, I don't think that Joe - or any other working-class Americans who have bought into this myth - can be completely exempt from responsibility for their gullibility. This is a bit of a tangent, but there has been a series of interesting posts on this Christian blog recently about why people so credibly buy into misinformation: The original post didn't have anything to do with this issue, but I think the maxim is a universal one: people do not accept and propogate such misinformation so readily unless they have an underlying desire to do so. When Obama gives Joe a nuanced answer about increasing the tax burden on those businesses that can most afford it in order to give breaks to small business just starting out (which would include Joe's putative business), it ends up in Joe's mind as evidence of "socialism" and "wealth distribution" within the space of a couple of days (compare this to this). That isn't innocent stupidity, that's malicious ignorance. This of course begs the question as to why someone would so willingly buy into such misinformation. The blog I mentioned before uses the term "Melon morality" to describe the phenomenon where people invent fictitious monsters to compare themselves down to, in order to aggrandise their own moral disposition: By any sense of the word, the life that Joe leads is a mediocre one. If he has bought into the myth that hard-work necessarily translates into wealth, then it would be understandable if he suffers agonising moments in which he questions his self-worth. The simplest and easiest way to allay these doubts is to compare himself down to a ficticious cabal of welfare cheats, who must only be poor because they don't share his work-ethic (which is highlighted in an interview that he gave - which I now cannot find for the life of me - in which he questioned why his wealth should be redistributed to those who don't work as hard as he does). This need to make a virtue of modest acheivements facilitates a self-aggrandising "optical illusion", where one's own otherwise unremarkable virtues are contrasted with the virtues of a demographic that doesn't actually exist. Poor whites thus vote against their interests, because they have a visceral need to believe that they are not like those poor people, who are content to just mooch off the hard-work of others. People like Joe therefore willingly refuse to recognise the realities of their socio-economic status, because by doing so they would have to necessarily conflate themselves with the people they have invented in order to make themselves look more virtuous. Given all this, when Obama becomes president and mails Joe that tax credit to get his business off the ground, I hope that he has enough integrity to mail it back, lest he participate in this insidious process of wealth-distribution. Somehow, though, I can't see that happening.

fucking awesome post james.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka I don't give a shit about Joe the Plumber--again it's the philosophy involved and the slippery slope that Obama is pushing. Don't worry Josh, you too will have a job and a family to support some day.

where's the slippery slope?


i had a prof in law school that used to say that a situation that is usually termed a slippery slope is more likely a sticky step. the slippery slope concept is usually BS because people like status quo and fight change to the bitter end. in any event, explain the slippery slope theory on this one. you fear an obama administration would push for lowering the highest marginal tax bracket to 100K? Even the most liberal democrat wouldn't go along with that, simply because it would put every member of congress is the highest tax bracket.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo yeah, it's painfully obvious you think the "relevancy" of Obama's answer to Joe's question is directly proportional how many times its mentioned. so not mention it at all and everything will be fine is your defence? tell me something thats not so obvious more to the point though...my God you people never cease to amaze me. how many times have politicians invoked people they've met on the campaign trail in a stump speech or debate of some sort? people like this are invoked because of their common connection with not only the electorate at large but whatever percieved connection they have to that particular candidate's viewpoint. how is this guy any different? i'll tell you why... this time the person who was invoked revealed something very telling about Obama, now he's targeted like a public official instead of who he really is or represents, the electorate. McCain brought up this guy because of what it revealed about your candidate, plain and simple. if anything is telling now it's how people like you tolerate, even condone, the personal destuction of people for what they believe in or what they expect out of the people THEY want working for THEM. if you can't step out of the f**king box and see how f**ked up that is then you are what's wrong with this country not guys like Joe the Plumber or even Obama for that matter

Yes but they're usually "invoked" in stump speeches or low key environments and as a passive anecdotal. Hillary does it all the time in her speeches, the comparisons are so vague I often wonder if those are real people or she just made them up. She has gotten in trouble for not describing their "situations" accurately.

McCain invoked JTP in a national debate, and spoke directly to him through the camera several times. Without meeting him first, without so much as a casual vetting. 26 times his name was mentioned. He did it again on Letterman, he hasn't even met this man. (EDIT: And he is still doing it, knowing full well now where it will lead.) Now McCain is trying to turn around and blame it on Obama?

At any rate I don't think it matters right now. The who said what when BS is so old. What's happening to JTP is more an example of the broken mass media machine that drives the current fourth estate. It is McCain's fault for starting the shit but there are lots of things to be said about the press' inability to exercise restraint (left, right, and center).

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.