Herald Editorial: No one needs Samuel Wurzelbacher… anymore

The streets of Holland, Ohio must have been deserted on Oct. 12, 2008. A small town outside of Toledo, the streets of Holland seldom crowd or jam but on Oct. 12, Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, came to town and security was tight.
Samuel Wurzelbacher was playing football in his front yard with his son when Obama came to talk with him and his neighbors.

Wurzelbacher made $40,000 in 2006 as a plumber’s assistant. The company he works for employs eight people and there is disagreement about how much money it makes but it makes between $250,000 and $500,000 a year.

For years he has been saying that he is going to buy that company. Of course first he will need a plumbing license. But those do not come cheap. And because they are so expensive it is a drag to buy them because you feel very old when you make a big investment.

Licenses are investments. You spend some money on a license so that you can make money for the rest of your career. So then it is more than an investment. It is a commitment to a path in life.

And it is good to commit and to invest. America needs both actions. And it needs plumbers too.

Here is the paradox of the American Dream: any specific person has limitless potential. But someone will have to put their hand in toilets for $40,000 a year.
And that is who Joe the Plumber is — the beer-belly of America’s bell-curve.
Everyone needed Joe the Plumber. John McCain needed a shiny, bald head to rub for good luck before he went on stage. Some Americans needed someone with whom they could identify and who they could trust.

Other Americans needed someone to dislike because most of them liked John McCain. Even after his act got weird. When he chose Sarah Palin as his vice president candidate and abased Barack Obama despite the terms reached during their pre-election parley his act got weird and he gave us plenty of reasons to lose our respect.

But we wanted to respect John McCain. We needed to respect John McCain. We needed to find dignity in his face as he yanked the microphone out the hands of the elderly McCain-supporter who accused Obama of being “Arab.”

So we needed Joe the Plumber too. Democrats needed someone to call stupid and ignorant and ugly. Because President George W. Bush was in hiding and people were generally glad about that.

And because Americans needed him and wanted to see him and wanted to hear him and wanted to ridicule him and wanted to comment favorably on his intentions, the media had to give him to Americans. They all had to jump.

And jump they did. They jumped right onto Samuel Wurzelbacher’s front lawn where he played football with his son the night before. And they all parked their news vans in the street where he got all crazy on presidential candidate Barack Obama and said that his tax plan sucks.

He said, “I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan’s going to tax me more, isn’t it?”

And indeed it will. His contentions were valid and conservative Americans needed valid points of issue with Obama. They needed a champion. And for a brief moment on Oct. 12, 2008, Samuel Wurzelbacher played that role beautifully. And everybody saw it and they wanted to believe in his integrity and in his down-to-earthness and in his wholesomeness and they wanted to buy his bargain brand Midwestern wisdom. And they needed it. Americans needed Samuel Wurzelbacher because they needed Joe the Plumber.

But no one needs it anymore. No one needs Samuel Wurzelbacher.

Here is a message to Samuuel Wurzelbacher:
You should write a book. You could definitely write an interesting book.
But the book you write should not be a “Joe the Plumber Manifesto” type book. That would be terrible. Your opinions are unpopular yet you offer them, like a stranger on a bus. Stop it.

Your tale is what would interest readers. What were you thinking when you peaked through your bedroom blinds on Oct. 12 to see what the ruckus was about and realized that you were what the ruckus was about?

But there is something else. You need to knock off this, “I’m a regular guy and yet my opinion is suddenly so much more important and valid and freaking awesome now that I’ve been on TV” routine.

Your opinion is unpopular and yet you sell it like a fad diet. You are so self-assured as to mount the chair of critics like Bill Maher and say that you have given up your dreams of owning a medium-sized plumbing company for the pursuit of fame and importance and, oh yes, money, money, money, money.

Take a deep breath, Sammy, my boy. Soak it in through the lungs. All of it. The money, the fame, the feeling that you’re important and the feeling that your opinion is awesome. Take it in. How does average feel now that you’re more than average? It feels great to be more than average, doesn’t it?

Stop it. Shut up. Knock it off. No one cares about you anymore and they shouldn’t and it is good that they do not. Your opinion represents nothing. We were all just pretending that it did.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=13557

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 13 2010. Filed under Editorial, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com