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| No Pasarán's chief blogger with Joe the Plumber at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, MdD, during CPAC in 2017 |
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who rose to national fame as “Joe the Plumber” after confronting Barack Obama on the 2008 campaign trail, died Sunday
writes the New York Post's Ronny Reyes (thanks to Ed Driscoll). Following the obituary excerpt of Joe the Plumber below is my description of another major disappointment regarding right-leaning news media outlets, a glaring omission of all that occurred following Wurzelbacher's 2008 confrontation. But first, the New York Post obituary:
Wurzelbacher, 49, died after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer in July, his wife, Katie Wurzelbacher told Fox News.
… Wurzelbacher became a symbol of the average Joe when the plumber challenged Obama at a campaign event in Toledo, Ohio, accusing the presidential candidate’s tax plan of going against the American Dream.
The local man criticized the tax policy as a blow to small business owners like himself, with the standoff erupting in the news cycle and garnering the attention of the Republican party.
The McCain-Palin campaign then gave him the nickname “Joe the Plumber,” and invited Wurzelbacher to speak at campaign events on behalf of middle-class Americans.
Wurzelbacher’s influence in the election was evident when his name was reportedly mentioned more than a dozen times during the Oct. 15, 2008, debate between Obama and McCain.
In an-depth 2010 post on the JournoList — and, as far as we can tell, the most dispassionate in-depth examination of the issue of Obama's birth certificate — No Pasarán wrote as follows:
As a reader of JustOneMinute told Tom Maguire (as linked by Glenn Reynolds):
I don’t think Obama was born in Kenya or any other place other than Hawaii.
But I find it outrageous and ridiculous that we know more about Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber than we know about [the occupant of the Oval Office].
I remember coming across blog posts back then, which I frankly didn't pay much interest to, about rumors of Obama liking to go to back alleys or gay bars in Chicago to get on his knees and to service men. The MSM and blogs like my own as well as those in my blog roll were too serious for that sort of thing. Now we can all agree on that kind of thing should perhaps not be in the forefront of the news — although it was not beneath none other than Obama himself to use the same type of saucy revelations (heterosexual, in his opponent's case) to defeat a rival candidate — but what with the recent revelations (which only concern homosexual fantasies), maybe we — and especially the MSM — should have paid an iota more attention.
Moreover: When considering the case of the manifesto — notably censored — of Audrey Hale, the transgender school shooter who gunned down children and teachers in Nashville, should we generally be perhaps more wary of those involved in the practice of what used to be called "deviant" forms of sex or certainly of those who wish to protect same? I know that we are immediately supposed to be called homophobic (transphobic, sexist, racist, etc, etc, etc) upon such a comment, but the question needs to be raised…
Of course, we are allowed to ask even more than back then how truthful was Obama's initial commitment to traditional marriage before he "evolved."
Whatever the case: whether it was Obama's birth certificate, his sexuality, same-sex marriage, or the Reverend Jeremiah Wright flare-up, the MSM did not only not show an iota of interest in any specific issue, it ranted and raved at anybody who might be so inclined.
Back to the subject matter at hand: Insofar as it is necessary, let us remember what the mainstream media was like (plus ça change…) during the Obama era:
Some of the best articles on the JournoList scandal — what the Spectator's R Emmett Tyrrell Jr calls "a mother lode of left-wing bigotry, screeds, and semi-literate gibbering" — come from a fellow Spectator commentator: "as worldly wise as I like to think that I am," writes John R. Guardiano, "I have been stunned, shocked and appalled by the raw partisanship and animalistic lust for power displayed by this pack of left-wing journalists."
Of course I always [k]new most Washington journalists were leftists. But what I didn't realize were the depths of intellectual dishonesty and dishonor to which many Washington journalists would descend in order to protect leftist pols and smear conservatives.Indeed, for anyone not familiar with the case (i.e., for anyone used to get his information from the mainstream media — or what (Glenn Reynolds agrees) should be called the One-Party Media), John R. Guardiano gives the run-down of the emails' "extremely troubling and reprehensible" content:
• the Journolisters' attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright;John R. Guardiano explains more in detail:
• their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as "racists" and "bigots";
• their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead;
• their intolerant desire to have the government censor and shut down Fox News; and
• their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president.
We always knew that most liberal journalists were biased. Now we know that many of them are dishonest — and that, like their leftist forbearers in the Soviet Union, they reserve unto themselves the right to lie and to cheat to further their political ends.Reason's Michael C. Moynihan points out (via Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit) that "the charming and efficient pundits of Washington, D.C." turn out to be
We know this because of the Daily Caller's astonishing report … that a cabal of liberal journalists, activists, and academics acted in concert, and with malice aforethought, to kill and bury stories that were unfavorable to their political masters: Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Indeed, these "journalists" were so blindly and zealously committed to the left-wing political agenda that they advocated smearing their political opponents with wholly unfounded charges of "racism" and "bigotry."
Thus Ackerman's call for his fellow lefty "journalists" to "pick one," any one conservative. After all, "who cares" who it is? Who cares about their innocence? Just pick a prominent conservative and call him a racist. Smear him! Show no mercy! Destroy his reputation and kill his public image! Now!
members of a listserv inhabited by liberal journalists and academics expressed their desire to see Rush Limbaugh die of a heart attack; to toss their enemies through plate glass windows; to call random conservatives racists; and to rid the country of those “fucking NASCAR retards.” … While commenters have noted blogger Spencer Ackerman’s sleazy suggestion that liberals start labeling random Republicans “racist”—pick a conservative, like “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists"—few noticed the obsession with accusing opponents not of being misguided or wrong, but motivated by racial animus and Nazi-like…
