USA Today: Fox News pushed the "Joe the Plumber" story

[sabra]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/?loc=interstitialskip

<snip>

Update at 3 p.m. ET: USA TODAY's Dennis Cauchon is on the scene and files this report on Joe's eruption onto the national stage:

"Joe The Plumber" lives in a small beige ranch house in a tree-lined working class neighborhood outside of Toledo. On Thursday afternoon, 25 journalists from as far away as Italy and four satellite TV trucks lined the street in front of his house.

Lucas County Republican Chairman John Stainbrook said the plumber's rise to fame began when Fox News saw him quoted in the Toledo Blade from an exchange he had Sunday with Democrat Barack Obama. Obama had knocked on doors while campaigning in the neighborhood.

Fox News asked the state Republican Party to find Wurzelbacher, Stainbrook said. Stainbrook located the plumber's brother, who gave him Wurzelbacher's phone number and asked for McCain yard signs and bumper stickers.

The Republican Party gave Wurzelbacher's phone number to Fox News, which interviewed him Tuesday. "Fox broke the story, and McCain picked it up," Stainbrook said.

The Republican Party is trying to get Joe to appear onstage with McCain on Sunday at a Toledo rally, but the plumber may not be available because he's flying to New York to appear on Mike Huckabee's show Saturday night on Fox News, said Jonathan Anderson, vice chair of the Lucas County Republican Party.

[kwolf68]

1. AGAIN

Why should we care about this guy? What am I missing?

[Miss Chybil]

7. He's voting for McCain.

There aren't that many of them? Hell, I don't know what's so important about him. Good question.

[icanthelpit]

8. You shouldn't care about this guy

The media needs these silly stories to sell advertising dollars. This will fade in two days. Obviously McCain is pushing it as a direct attack against Obama's problems with white working-class voters.

[kwolf68]

14. I guess so, but...

Why doesn't McCain just hire an actor to 'play a working class guy' in a TV ad instead of trotting out this 'prop'?

The entire McCain campaign has just been amazingly confusing to me...he's literally making Bush's campaign look brilliant.

I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone is going to listen to this clown talk about socialism and decide to vote for McCain?

[pnwmom]

13. Because of what it tells us about McCain's lack of judgment.

This is another case of his not vetting someone. He didn't run a simple check to make sure that this guy was on the up-and-up before he introduced him to the country at the debate. Joe's not licensed as a plumber and as recently as 2006, he only made $40K as his yearly income. And the business he is dreaming of buying would COST something around $250K to purchase -- not yield that much in income.

So Joe-the-fraud would actually get a tax decrease, not an increase.

Though he would have to use some of that to pay his tax liens.

[HughMoran]

19. Just a bit of DU obsession post debate

Hopefully we can move on soon...

[AlCzervik]

2. Wait, Mike Huckabee has a show? Did no one vet this guy, anyone?

[SuperTrouper]

3. See? He was a GOP plant.

I rest my case.

[olkaz]

4. This is out of hand.

The guy is a retard. He is qualified for nothing.

Not even plumbing, evidently.

[avaistheone1]

11. Exactly and that is why he should be exposed as a fraud.

Just another case of very poor republican judgement.

[Why Syzygy]

5. lol .. they're fighting for the stage with him.

What a bunch of bozos.

[ErinBerin84]

6. not surprising. Hannity is running the Mccain campaign.

[Supersedeas]

9. the propoganda network just keeps sliming right along

[WeDidIt]

10. Has tehre ever been a presidential candidate that let a cable news station

write their talking points for them?

[Uncle Joe]

12. I believe this is the reason, they did it.

The corporate media spin this B.S. frame about the election centering on "Joe Six Pack" it was never about "Joe Six Pack," "Soccer Moms," "Hockey Moms," or any other single or grouped entity, these are nothing but marketing terms, cynically employed by the corporatist wing of the corporatist party and their corporate media puppet enablers in an attempt do divide and categorize the American People. Divide and conquer is what this is all about, and they haven't changed their Machiavellian ways even after the past eight calamitous years.

Having set the stage by cheapening the election in to a marketing gimmick, with the name "Joe", the Grand Old Corporatist Party are hoping to ride this delusional energy in to the White House, so they get some planted clown who happens to use that name to personalize the election as if it were all about him in order to magnify his import out of proportion, thus allowing him to damage the one candidate most likely to actually help the American People as a whole.

This election is about the devastated economy, a war based on lies with Iraq, the betrayal of one our covert CIA agents and her company by the corrupt, incompetent Cheney/Bush administration, global warming climate change threatening life as we know it, abusive totalitarian government illegally wiretapping the American People, executive office enabled torture; something that's been repugnant to every President since George Washington, our piss poor standing around world, the exploding national debt, disenfranchisement of the American voters by fraudulent vote counting machines which always seem to err on the side of the Republicans, the purging of innocent voters, etc. etc.

When you forget what this election is about and let the corporate media dictate and market it to you, the Republican Party wins.

[theoldman]

16. Hey, I like your post.

You understand politics better than most people.

[Uncle Joe]

18. Thanks, theoldman.

Peace to you.:hi:

[progressivebydesign]

15. this is quite possibly the STUPIDEST campaign in history. No really.

They are so unbelievably stupid and unprofessional. What is wrong with them???

[theoldman]

17. It's called ignorance.

Some people are ignorant and don't know it. That is why they stay that way.