Jay The Annoyed

Can I officially say that I'm sick and tired of hearing about Joe the Plumber and the 'instant' celebrity he has become? I'm not jealous of the fact that he's become a pawn in a hotly contested political game but the fact that he is being used to represent the 'common man' even though he couldn't be farther from the truth. When Samuel J. "Joe (The Plumber)" Wurzelbacher of Ohio asked Democratic candidate Barack Obama how his proposed tax plan would affect him, Republican candidate John McCain seized on the opportunity to make reference to that fact and showed that the common man was 'afraid' of what Obama was promoting and began using Joe as a symbol of his attachment and care to the common man.

To borrow a phrase, "well my friends" I ain't buying it. First off, according to what I have read about Joe, he asked a theoretical question about what would happen if he wanted to own a small company worth approximately $250K; he wanted to know if his tax burden would increase and the answer is yes. Now people can term this 'spreading the wealth' or income based taxation but one irrefutable fact remains, that no matter what, if the government keeps spending more than it is taking in in taxes then there is no way in Hell that the country is going to start digging itself out of the hole it is in in a financial sense. Remember all that tough talk many people had about ending repayment by countries in debt to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund? Maybe it's time that we start jumping on that bandwagon as well.

But the issue here isn't taxes as such, it is Joe. I'm tired of being compared to Joe because I have nothing in common with him. I'm nowhere close to earning $250K per year. I'm not looking to own my own business (as yet) and have no plans to do so in the immediate future so my concern is what the tax plans of both candidates will or won't do for me. I can tell you this, the changes in the tax laws over the last eight years haven't really helped me in the least. I didn't receive an economic stimulus check and in fact my taxes have gone up in recent days. I'm not an 'elitist', I don't run the 'Georgetown Cocktail Circuit' and I like to think of myself as a member of the 'common man club' but from what I've seen, I'm apparently not.

Now perhaps Joe believed that his time in the spotlight would be a flash in the pan as he liked to term it but that isn't the case. He's milking the opportunity for whatever it is worth. There's talk of record deals and the like. He's had to hire press agents and assistants to help deal with the media frenzy over him. Um... excuse me... but as a celebrity don't you think you'll be earning a little more than $250K? So by either candidate's tax plans you'll be shelling out more so are you so common now? I mean how many of us have our own press agents. Hell I act as my own press agent and I have yet to line up a gig on David Letterman or the Colbert Report. And Joe's only claim to celebrity is the fact that he asked a question of a candidate that was not vetted and happened to be captured by the media. I've seen politicians in person too and I've asked them questions, and the true 'common man' reaction to such incidents is the fact that half of what is asked by 'common people' never gets reported.

I dont' want to belittle Joe as I'm sure he's a nice person but he's not me and it grates on me when people begin to talk to him as if he has become a voice for the common man all over this nation. The closest I have come to being a plumber has been fixing my toilet and changing the shower head in the bathroom. Beyond that about the only thing I have in common with Joe is the fact that we have the letter 'J' somewhere in our names. He isn't me and he isn't going to be me in the run up to the election. I suppose he too will go away after Tuesday since there will no longer need to be coverage of a $250K earning plumber who asks questions that all of us would ask of anyone looking to raise our taxes. Perhaps after Tuesday then he'll truly become one of 'us' and be 'common' once again.