Clearing some smoke, corrections etc.

It seems as though Joe Wurzelbacher is not registered to vote in Ohio. This calls into question many things not the least of which is his intention to vote for anybody on Nov. 4th. When looking through the public records available online it’s not entirely clear who Joe Wurzelbacher is or what his affiliations actually are. Now that it is morning somebody who is local to this story should start investigating family ties at the courthouse. Without calling old folks at home I am at a brick wall in what I can find out. Public records can clarify the relationship between Joe and Robert Wurzelbacher  (not Richard as in earlier versions of this) if any. To be clear it was the father of the Keating son-in-law who died in 2004.

Back to Joe the Plumber. The business he works for, Newell Plumbing, appears to be a chain. The locations that I have looked into look like residential properties based on the google satelite images and they are not the property Joe Wurzelbacher is said to reside at on the street where he had the encounter with Obama.

Many have pointed out the oddity that this man who is supposedly not involved with politics would be interviewed by several right wing media outlets prior to the debate and was already confirmed for the morning shows by the time the event wrapped up. Within hours it was reported that the McCain Campaign had asked him to attend a rally on Sunday but he was going to be out of town for the weekend…doing the talk show circuit it turns out. Many have also remarked on the similarity between the talking points he’s been repeating and some new ones cropping up around the talk circuit with Stephanie Miller reporting that she’s recently gotten calls with the same language. Also an odd thing, if nothing else, is the presence of newspaper reporters at his house to photograph him watching the debate, though he says he had no idea he would be mentioned. Of course he was more than mentioned, he was McCain’s whole line of attack.

This brings me to what is perhaps the oddest convergence of all in this. My research partner and I were among the first people on this and before even our regular readers had seen our posts we were seeing links in from Martin Eisenstadt. He is a strange character, and I mean character literally. He was involved in a recent hoax involving a faked video of an interview from Iraqi television which fooled some in the mainstream media featuring him promoting an idea for building casinos in the green zone in Iraq. There is also a YouTube Channel featuring the same person doing other related satires. “Eisenstadt” posted a supposed quote on his blog from Rick Davis chastising staffers for the connection between Joe the Plumber and the Keating Five. I must admit that initially I saw this quote out of the context of the original blog and although it seemed unlikely Davis would say it, at first I didn’t know how to integrate it into the whole narrative. When I realized where it originated things started to make more sense, slightly.

Many things about this aren’t adding up and the proximity of a known hoaxer has me even more perplexed. I’m sure that people are looking into the Keating connection as we speak but check out this “Martin Eisenstadt” and see if you think you recognize any of his tricks in the Joe Wurzelbacher situation. I don’t want to draw too many outlandish conclusions in one night but I am comparing the video tapes closely.

The real problem with Joe the Plumber, even if he’s not some kind of republican plant or hoaxer, is that he’s a caricature. The situation he sketched out to Obama doesn’t even accurately reflect his own reality let alone that of typical small business owners. As Obama pointed out 98% of small business owners make under $250,000 a year. If it had been accurate it would still not be representative. Further more there is no reason to believe that Joe the Plumber has any special insight or understanding into the truth of the matter when if comes to tax policy or any other policy. At best he’s a snapshot of what that one person chose to project at that moment and it has gotten out of hand. At worst it’s an attempt by republicans to either create or shamelessly capitalize on what is really a meaningless moment. How much a fiction Joe the Plumber is almost doesn’t matter because no matter how you slice it, that’s what he still is…fiction.

~ by citizenworm on October 16, 2008.