Whatever Happened to Joe the Plumber?

The everyman journalist went to Israel ... and then was forgotten

Our greatest national treasure, besides a testicle-shaped form of vehicular embellishment, is of course Joe the Plumber, a vaguely humanoid fantasy creation of the "proudly ignorant wingnut" portion of the Republican party.

You'll recall that Joe the Plumber went to Israel a few weeks ago on behalf of Pajamas TV, and people lost their minds with fury that this dope was doing some other thing that would be talked about for a while on cable news.

But then Joe went to Israel, and nothing really happened. Oh sure, he unleashed this priceless gem about "I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting," and he got mad at Reuters for... something? Besides that, we've heard nary a peep about Joe the Plumber in most publications.

Anybody who runs a Web site knows that two topics get crazy amounts of page views: Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber. So the folks at Pajamas TV naturally assumed this was a huge "win" for their hideous-looking web site. They had a world-class (anti-)celebrity, one who everybody knew and either loved or hated, reporting for them. The media would eat this up!

But Pajamas TV's plan doesn't appear to be working out so well. Most people can't remember who sent Joe the Plumber overseas. The Economist just assumed it was Fox News. And your helpful Jewish Ledger, out of Connecticut, attempted to send readers over to the Pajamas TV site but instead linked to pajamastv.com, which you would be forgiven for thinking had something to do with Pajamas TV but does not. (It's owned by Pajamas Media, but currently just sports a bunch of garbage links about television.)

Has anybody heard about Joe the Plumber in, oh, the last week and a half? Is this guy still in Israel? Is he even alive?

And does anybody care?

Sara K. Smith writes for Wonkette.

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