As Sarah Palin starts her political action committee, signaling her interest in playing a part in national politics as a solo act, her former protégé, Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber, has wrapped up his first gig as a "war correspondent" for a right-wing video website with the unlikely name of Pajamas Media.
Joe the Reporter presses on in hopes of capitalizing (the new word is "monetizing") on the fleeting fame that was provided by the 2008 presidential campaign. Joe's book (yes, he got a book published. It's called Fighting for the American Dream) seems to have vanished from sight -- like the real American dream.
Wurzelbacher is booked as a speaker for Pajamas' Media's Conservatism 2.0 Conference in Washington D.C., Feb. 26-28.
Though Joe the Plumber was first introduced to the public by Obama, he was quickly co-opted by the other side. He became a celebrity borne of the desperate silliness that characterized the McCain/Palin effort. He was later hired by Pajamas Media to "cover the war in Gaza." His real job, of course, was to praise the Israeli Defense Forces, and demean Obama. His assignment outraged innumerable columnists and bloggers. Small wonder people in the industry were miffed. Joe got a job and thousands of professionals lost theirs recently.
How come this guy gets hired when the pros are getting their pink slips?
It seems to me that frugally-minded news agencies who hyped the notion of "citizen journalist" opened the door for amateurs to play reporter. Sometimes, though, you're not going to like what they say. We can drop the pretense of objectivity, too. While we're at it, I wouldn't count on accuracy, either.
Let's face it: Joe the Reporter was hired to talk, not really report.
Alex Koppelman writing on Salon.com, suggested that Wurzelbacher lacked integrity. That, undoubtedly, is a wholesome quality for a good journalist:
Pajamas Media co-founder Roger Simon wrote that they intended to "right" what they perceive as an anti-Israel "imbalance" in the mainstream media's coverage.
Of course, Joe's not exactly a noted truth-teller himself: The question that made him famous was predicated on the idea that he'd be affected by Obama's plan to raise taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year. It was later revealed, however, that he wouldn't reach that threshold and might in fact be eligible for a tax cut.
Wurzelbacher said he believed that a vote for Barack Obama was tantamount to a vote for the death of Israel.
You remember Joe E. Brown in Some LIke It Hot: "Nobody's perfect."
Mr. Koppelman suggested that the idea of "citizen journalism" may have been misapplied by the folks at Pajamas Media:
Looking back some day, we might remember this moment as the one when the seriously overhyped phenomenon known as citizen journalism finally jumped the proverbial shark.
During the campaign, it became known that Wurzelbacher, a plumber from Ohio, did not actually have a plumber's license. So he was really Joe the Unlicensed Plumber. You see, you need a license to be a real plumber. But you don't a license to be a real journalist.
Tom Bevan, who blogs on Real Clear Politics, wrote that sending Wurzelbacher around the country to interview people as an Everyman was a good idea. But creating Joe the War Correspondent was a disaster:
If you told me someone was sending Joe the Plumber into a war zone in the Middle East to report on a conflict that he appears to have no particular qualifications or expertise to cover, with the intent of letting Israel's Average Joes share their story, I'd say that sounds like one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.
What about those qualifications? In 1984, during the Democratic National Convention is San Francisco, I chatted up the veteran NBC reporter Douglas Kiker in a saloon not far from the Moscone Convention Center. He stood at the bar sipping an Anchor Steam Beer. (All good reporters avail themselves of the local products.) The place was packed. A middle-age cocktail waitress, carrying a tray full of drinks, recognized Kiker, and rushed over to him.
"Oh, Mr. Kiker," she gushed, "my daughter's going to journalism school. What advice do you have for her?"
"Tell her to study anything but journalism," he muttered.
She looked as if she'd been struck across the face. After all, this lady is working her tail off in this bar to put her kid through school. Kiker recognized that immediately, and tried to soften his curmudgeonly response.
"Uh, what I mean," he stammered a bit, "is tell her to study all sorts of things, history, economics, too. All this will help her in her career."
Wurzelbacher is a hero to some because he embodies the anti-journalist. He personifies the resentments that many Americans embrace about "the treasonous mainstream media."
"I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war," Wurzelbacher opined. "I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for'em. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer--and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting."
That's a thought. Wurzelbacher must be having the time of his life.
Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee. He says one doesn't need any special training to be a great war correspondent:
Stephen Crane, the novelist and journalist best known for the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, covered the brief Greco-Turkish War and the Spanish-American War, somehow completing his assignments without graduating from a string of colleges. ... Ernie Pyle worked on a much longer and wider stage than Crane, and was known for his folksy, down-home stories of regular people serving in World War II. Pyle didn’t complete his degree at Indiana University, but he didn’t let that stop him from getting syndicated by more than 300 newspapers. He picked up a Pulitzer on his way to becoming the most famous war correspondent in American media history.
That's right.
That's right. No J-school for Ambrose Bierce, either. Yet when I read Ernie Pyle's name next to Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher's, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Bruce Bellingham is a San Francisco columnist for the SF Northside, and is the author of Bellingham by the Bay, published by Council Oak Books. Tell him what he should know at bruce@northsidesf.com
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