Paul Farhi /WaPo gloats over Joe the Plumber, shows Beltway interest in heartland Americans

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post offers "Joe the Author, Plumbing New Lows in Interest" (link), a slab of hackwork showing how much the Beltway establishment dislikes Americans from the heartland, especially of the conservative variety. (For a related campaign that also involved the WaPo, see the Sarah Palin smear posts.)

If JTP were in a DC establishment-approved occupation or class, articles like this would never have been written. Instead, the coverage would match that last seen in Socialist Realism.

As proof of that, here are the more pungent parts of the article with "Joe the Plumber" replaced by the mythical, liberal counterpart "Jane the Teacher". Can anyone imagine the WaPo publishing anything like the following?

Jane the Teacher (no longer a teacher; first name actually Edith) popped into our town yesterday evening to sell her new book and to remind people that she's still a plain and simple gal. Mission accomplished, on at least one of her missions.

About 11 people wandered into the rows of seats set up hopefully in the basement of a downtown Border's bookstore to hear Jane speak. Jane addressed them from behind a lectern and with a microphone, but that seemed unnecessarily formal.

If you've already forgotten "Jane" Wurzelbacher, 35, of Toledo, Ohio, it just goes to show you how ephemeral the life of a plain-speaking, Democratic Everywoman is these days...

Now, only a few months later, she's kind of like a vestigial tail, a leftover artifact from a forgotten time. She's Clara Peller, Willie Horton or Gennifer Flowers -- names that are the questions in a "Jeopardy!" category called "Presidential Campaign Distractions."...

...Wurzelbacher was scheduled to speak and sign books for three hours, but the Jane Show was over in 55 minutes. Total copies of "Jane the Teacher" sold: five.

Thu, 02/26/2009 - 15:14 · Importance: 4